Campus Compact, a coalition of over 1,000 universities dedicated to community engagement, held its biennial conference last month. While university partnerships with nonprofits have never been stronger, shifting universities to be community-serving institutions remains challenging.
Thirty years ago, Deaf students at Gallaudet University, a school that has served the hard-of-hearing for more than a century, stood up to demand a Deaf president. The action has become a celebrated marker in the movement for Deaf community self-determination.
We all know that when leadership changes suddenly, a nonprofit may lose donor support. This story from a University of Nevada, Las Vegas foundation, in which a $14-million donation was revoked, provides one illustrative example.
A statewide audit of 30 state university foundations in New York finds 10 of them to be deficient in some respects, with more serious lapses at two of them.
Twin brothers Thomas and Timothy Pearson cared enough about peace to pledge $100 million to the University of Chicago to study conflict resolution, but the relationship soured and the donors want their cash back. This case is reminiscent of the historic Robertson suit against Princeton where the baby was eventually split.
The president of Wichita State University has decided that the bounds of the public-private Innovation Campus are really more a “state of mind,” opening up the rest of the publicly owned campus to private investment.
Admissions offices have fielded so many inquiries from prospective students participating in marches that many colleges and universities have issued proactive statements to clarify that they won’t penalize peaceful protests.
Ten years ago, the Lundquists made waves when they decided to invest $50 million into a nonprofit designed to boost existing Los Angeles public schools. Now, they’re investing another $35 million. A long-term approach, they contend, is key to achieving results.
University presidents’ salaries break the $1 million barrier more often; meanwhile, the use of endowment funds attracts greater scrutiny and tuition rates are on the rise.
When are reparations required? The University of Chicago’s official history dates its founding to 1890. But activists claim that the university has ignored an earlier campus founded in part with slave money that operated from the 1850s until the 1880s and from whom some of the original donor and faculty base of the campus derived.
