Last Monday, the University of California at Berkeley received a pledge for a $113 million gift, the largest single gift in the school's history, according to a university statement. The gift comes from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and is designed to help the public university to stay competitive with elite private schools.
The gift comes in the form of a challenge grant that will match other private donations dollar-for-dollar, resulting in $220 million once the challenge is met, Forbes magazine reported Sept. 10. The university will use the money to create 100 new endowed faculty positions backed by permanent funds intended to keep UC-Berkeley professors' salaries competitive with those at top private schools.
An additional $3 million will be used to support an enhanced infrastructure for managing those endowed funds, Forbes reported.
The gift comes at a time when funding for public universities from state governments has not matched the 20 percent per annum top private universities have achieved on their endowments, the university statement said.
"Private institutions are at an advantage, having traditionally built up large endowments," said UC-Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau in the release. "With only a third of our annual budget coming from state funds, increasing the size of Berkeley's endowment is the only way to sustain a stable financial foundation for the future."
UC-Berkeley's endowment is $2.5 billion. Harvard University has a $35 billion endowment, and Stanford University's is $15 billion. Brown has a $2.8 billion endowment.
Between 2000 and 2006, 236 UC-Berkeley professors received job offers from other universities, most of them elite private schools. The school was able to keep 162 professors, but only through cost-cutting efforts that could not be sustained in the long-term, Birgeneau said.
Despite Berkeley's efforts, 30 percent of the faculty members who received offers left the university.
The funding will be distributed across the institution and, once matched, will make up a nearly 50 percent increase in UC-Berkeley's current $468 million in endowed faculty chair funding. Following the gift, each endowed professorship will be funded at $2 million, and professors will receive $25,000 per year in a scholarly allowance from the income, according to remarks by the chancellor. The university currently has 351 endowed chairs.
"This gift ... is a recognition that public universities can and must compete with the best private universities and can only do so through a partnership between public funding and private philanthropy," Birgeneau said.
Walter Hewlett, chairman of the board of the Hewlett Foundation, agreed in his address at the unveiling ceremony.
"Berkeley is the crown jewel of public higher education - not just in California, but in the country," Hewlett said. "UC-Berkeley is a special case in that we are not only supporting great work, we are supporting an important social concept - the importance of public education and universal access for our best and brightest students, irrespective of their ability to pay."
