The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation has begun a grant program to expand career options for Ph.D.s in the humanities, both within and outside academe. Awards will help academic departments encourage students to interact with the world as part of graduate training; use training in nonacademic settings; and match top students with…

The Kresge Foundation has undertaken an $18-million project to assist four-year, historically black colleges build successful fund-raising operations. The grants pay for consultants to analyze advancement offices and map improvements for them. The program will also match black-college advancement officers with mentors who are successful fund…

Colleges and universities are increasingly seeking donations from young entrepreneurs, using nontraditional approaches, and some have been very successful. Others have alienated wealthy young alumni by being too aggressive. Youthful entrepreneurs who do make gifts tend to time their donations to business events rather than to life events. (MSE)

The Carnegie Commission on Higher Education was established by The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in 1967 to study and make recommendations regarding the major issues facing U.S. higher education. The commission soon confronted a problem: no extant classification system differentiated colleges and universities along the…

The relationship between philanthropy and higher education has become mutually beneficial and interdependent. So why is there now talk of philanthropy abandoning higher education? In this article, the author dispels some of the current myths and encourages campus leaders to develop a new understanding of what foundations can and cannot offer them.

Financial inequality is growing in U.S. higher education. In this report, the author observes increasing differences between the endowments of rich and poor institutions, between the salaries of college and university presidents and their faculties, between the salaries of athletic coaches and professors, and between well and poorly compensated…

The Louis W. and Maud Hill Family Foundation is engaged in a productivity program to assist private colleges in its eight state service region (Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington) in controlling escalating costs while maintaining educational quality. The Hill Foundation's effectiveness could…

Trends in private foundation funding to higher education liberal education include a tendency toward smaller grants, more competition, and less long-term funding. Topics include causative factors in funding reductions, ways foundations can aid liberal arts institutions, and the development of a national task force on the future of liberal arts…

The Kellogg Foundation's assets have more than doubled in two years, making it the country's third-largest grantmaker. The rapid growth has increased both opportunities and strains within the organization but pleases colleges and universities, who carry out 85 percent of its grants. (MSE)

The president of the Council on Foundations, James A. Joseph, urges educators to develop volunteers who can eliminate the causes of social problems. Colleges and universities are in a special position to instill a sense of social responsibility in students. (MLW)

Most of the federal agencies that support postsecondary education use a quasifoundation model. The agencies that support educational activities can be divided into categories depending on the focus of the grants awarded: direct support to institutions, agencies with a mission, and special concerns. (MLW)

Small regional foundations, endowments often formed by an individual or family, represent a capillary network among colleges and universities, funneling smaller amounts of money to projects and programs out of the reach of the national foundations. A few foundations are identified and described. (MLW)

While the scholarly interest in philanthropy is growing, there remains concern about the difficulty of accomplishing serious study of the phenomenon because of the nature of grants and research funding. (MSE)

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, and Pew Charitable Trusts have halved the number of black colleges eligible to apply for grants, which some claim creates two classes of institution, the financially strong and the financially weak. Black colleges find the targeting policy insensitive. (MSE)