Pay attention to alumni donations, and you can't just focus on "big donations" | reviews

Text/Xiong Bingqi

On January 18, the Wuhan University Education Development Foundation received a total donation of 78 million yuan, which was anonymously donated by an old alumnus of the School of Life Sciences to support the development of education in his alma mater. It is understood that this year is the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the School of Life Sciences of Wuhan University, the old alumni are graduates of the Department of Biology of Wuhan University, out of gratitude for the care and cultivation of students in Wuhan University, decided to make their own scientific and technological achievements into an anonymous donation to their alma mater.

This anonymous donation attracted people's attention from the two keywords of "anonymity" and "78 million". In the author's opinion, mainland universities should regard alumni donations as an important aspect of expanding educational resources, and let alumni donations become the norm. In evaluating the operation of colleges and universities, it is necessary to gradually take alumni donations as an important indicator, but the attention should not be on the amount of alumni donations, but on the rate of alumni donations, and we should not only pay attention to the "large donations" of alumni.

According to statistics, as of June 2021, Chinese universities have received a total of 42.7 billion yuan in alumni donations. Universities received a total of $128.8 billion in donations between 1980 and 2021. The total donation of 128.8 billion yuan looks very "dazzling", but it is not as good as a Harvard university, and the 2018-2019 financial report released by Harvard University shows that the total size of Harvard University endowment funds reached 40.93 billion US dollars. In other words, all universities on the mainland accept only half of the total amount of donations from Harvard University.

The reason why the Harvard University Endowment Fund has reached such a large scale is that the endowment fund has a wide range of sources, including alumni donations, individual (non-alumni) donations, corporate donations, foundation donations, business donations, etc., and second, alumni donations not only have "large donations", but also have a high alumni donation rate. According to reports, in 2015, Harvard Business School alumnus John A. Paulson donated $400 million to the school, the highest single donation since the founding of Harvard University, and more than 70% of students maintained close ties with their alma mater after graduation.

In recent years, mainland universities have paid more and more attention to social donations, including alumni donations, but overall, alumni donations mainly focus on a small number of "rich alumni", and the proportion of ordinary alumni donations is low. The problem brought by this is that alumni donations are difficult to continue to develop, in a certain year, there is a "rich alumni" who donate more, the overall donation amount is relatively high, and there is no "rich alumni" donation, the donation amount of the year is low, but the "rich alumni" are limited after all.

This also reflects the deep-seated problem of expanding alumni donations in mainland universities: after students graduate and leave school, most schools do not establish close ties with them. This makes the willingness of ordinary alumni to donate low, and many alumni believe that donations are only a matter of a few "successful alumni" and "rich alumni". For example, last year, Northwestern University proposed on its official account that each alumni and teacher could donate a cup of milk tea money to the school every month to support the development and construction of the alma mater. The result was ridiculed as "the poorest 211 colleges and universities.".

The US NEWS University Rankings use alumni giving as an important indicator when ranking U.S. universities, but focus on the alumni giving rate (how many graduating alumni donate) rather than the amount of alumni donations. This evaluation index is fair to all schools - not to pursue large donations from wealthy alumni, but to value the donations of ordinary alumni to their alma mater.

If the university wants to improve the alumni donation rate, it must improve the quality of talent training, so that each alumni can have a stronger social competitiveness when they graduate, and they are full of affection for their alma mater; they must also continue to pay attention to the career development of graduate alumni, and provide continuous support for the career development of each graduating alumni through the formation of an alumni network to help alumni achieve career development and success. As more alumni develop their careers, it will be natural to increase the alumni donation rate.

Comparatively speaking, the alumni donations of some well-known universities in the mainland are relatively high, but the alumni donations of general undergraduate colleges and universities and higher vocational colleges can basically not be mentioned. Alumni donations from well-known universities are high, mainly donated by "rich alumni", and ordinary alumni also donate very little. In fact, every university can develop alumni donations and increase the rate of alumni donations, which requires schools to change their philosophy of running schools and regard alumni as important resources for running schools.

First of all, we must attach great importance to the cultivation of talents, take the cultivation of talents as the first priority of the school, so that students can obtain a real education, and the graduates of some colleges and universities on the mainland have a very weak feeling for their alma mater, and the root cause is that they have not obtained high-quality education. Secondly, colleges and universities should not only pursue to improve the initial employment rate of graduates leaving school, but should track and pay attention to the career and career development of each graduate after leaving school. In order to improve the initial employment rate, some colleges and universities adopt the practice of exchanging employment agreements for graduation certificates, which can only make some students choose to be "employed", which will only hurt the feelings of alumni for their alma mater. After these alumni graduate, how can they think of donating to their alma mater? (The author is a well-known education scholar) (For more news, please pay attention to Yangcheng Sect pai.ycwb.com)

Source | Yangcheng Evening News Yangcheng Pie

Editor-in-charge | Fu Mingtu

Edit | Lee Mei Yeon