What colleges and universities need from donors to thrive

Filed 56m ago · Via The Conversation · The Buffoon Desk

THIS STORY IS SCORED

Parisian

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Mostafameraji · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Donors gave $79 billion to U.S. colleges and universities in 2025, up 4% in constant dollars, with 89% of that total coming from just 2% of donors. Ken Griffin's $3 billion gift to Carnegie Mellon in September 2026 broke the record the Knights had set with their $2 billion gift to Oregon Health & Science University the year before, and 2026 alone also saw $750 million from Michael and Susan Dell to the University of Texas at Austin, $1 billion from the Knights to Oregon, and $371 million pledged by David Duffield to Cornell.

Meanwhile at least 16 colleges closed in 2025, including Martin University and Sterling College, and roughly 40 schools have been absorbed by other institutions since 2020. The authors note that unrestricted gifts, those with no strings attached, dropped below 7% of giving in 2024 even as megagifts for named buildings and specific programs keep climbing, a pattern the piece credits partly to federal research funding cuts and new endowment taxes under the Trump administration.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

It is a strange kind of healthy when the record for the biggest gift in history gets broken every single year while sixteen schools quietly lock their doors. Most of that money comes earmarked for a shiny new wing with somebody's name on it, not the light bill or the leaky roof, because a building makes a better plaque than a budget line. A school that cannot pay to keep the heat on does not get saved by a billion dollars for a Miami campus it will never see.

Source: Read the original at The Conversation → Scored: Parisian · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0