2015 was a record year for charitable giving to universities with the totals around $40B; the disproportionate percentage of giving shows 50% of the giving going to 2% of universities.
"College endowments may have grown last year by the smallest amount since 2012, as reported elsewhere on this site today,but institutions got some good financial news in the 2015 fiscal year: charitable contributions to colleges and universities rose to a record level, $40.3 billion, the Council for Aid to Education reports in its annual Voluntary Support of Education survey.
"Even so, a small and exclusive coterie of institutions is disproportionately benefiting from donors' largesse. The top 17 colleges and universities -- less than 1 percent of the total universe of about 3,900 institutions -- accounted for more than a quarter of the contributions, $10.42 billion. And 60 colleges and universities, under 2 percent of all institutions, received $20.15 billion, half of the total.
"The wealth gap in higher education is not a new story, by any means, but it is being fed, not closed, by the behavior of major donors."--Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed
