The Princeton University Web site this morning announces three gifts from alumni toward our capital fund campaign goal of $1.75-billion . One gift, from a 1974 alumnus is for $4.5-million, for the Princeton Environmental Institute for an endowed professorship, a student prize, and a fund to support academic innovation. A second, from a 1989 alumnus, is for another endowed professorship on Energy and the Environment — no dollar amount is mentioned in the press release, but given the price at which the university normally sells endowed professorships, it must be in the $5 million range.
The third gift comes from Gerhard R. (Gerry) Andlinger, a member of the Class of 1952 (the same class as James Baker and a number of prominent Princeton public figures), who has previously given about $27-million to the University, mostly for work in the humanities. His new gift is of another order altogether, however — it will amount to $100-million, and will be used to create the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment.
So all three gifts are for the environment and energy, and will be principally located in our Engineering School (with some spillover to my department, the Woodrow Wilson School). The press release tells us that one of the donors majored in history and another in history and politics, and that two of them received MBA’s (one also a JD) after graduating from Princeton. Two are investment professionals, and one a businessman (later a “full-time writer and conservationist”). One donor is a former Rhodes Scholar. I don’t know any of these gentlemen (well, yes, they are all males), but they certainly sound like people any university would be proud of. The gifts are no doubt part of a concerted university effort to raise endowment for our growing environmental programs, a growing concern for all universities.
We are of course accustomed to announcements of this sort by the elite universities. What is new is the scale of the largest gift. It was not too long ago that a $4.5-million donation would have attracted public notice, but “seven figures” is no longer attention-getting (though welcome nonetheless). The new standard is “nine-figures,” a level first achieved by Princeton a couple of years ago with a $101-million gift for the arts from Peter Lewis ’55 — apparently the extra $1-million was to put Mr. Lewis on the top as the largest single donor to the University. Mr. Andlinger is likely more modest, since I assume he could probably afford the extra $2-million it would have taken to put him on top.
As a Princeton faculty member, I am of course grateful to all of these men, and I am delighted that the university is making such good progress in its campaign, which the University is modestly calling “Aspire: A Plan for Princeton.” But it boggles the mind that single gifts have now topped the $100-million level — there were a great many gifts in the nine-figure range to American universities last year, and there will be as many this year, despite the dire situation of the national economy. No other country invests private wealth on this scale in higher education.
The question is: What is the relationship between the need to package mammoth “giving opportunities” for major donors and the capacity to plan in accordance with good educational policy? Is there any reason to fear that the construction of buildings and the creation of endowed professorships may not be the best way to develop an educational institution? Are there parts of the university educational portfolio that are unlikely to attract huge bucks, and that therefore may be left to wither? I fear so.
