<p>Cue7:</p>
<p>Your comments have been pretty insightful, and I agree that Chicago’s net donations need to improve over time. However, I think that the future outlook of Chicago’s fundraising is quite strong, which is why I’m not too worried about this result.</p>
<p>Of course, you’re right that the big sources of income are coming from corporations, and it’s important to secure greater funds from large companies in the future. But I still think that corporate donations are correlated with alumni presence. It makes sense that Chicago could secure large funds from, say, McKinsey, MorningStar, and Bloomberg, where UChicago-affiliated people run the show. But it’s more difficult to imagine that Chicago would be getting great donations from sources where alumni presence wasn’t felt as greatly. And that’s why the total number of (successful) alumni likely correlates with corporate donations. That Yale, MIT, Hopkins, and Duke are outperforming Chicago in that respect is evidence that these schools are outperforming Chicago in the corporate world - which isn’t all that surprising. It’s more surprising to me that Chicago, as a school focused on academia and highly theoretical matters, is performing on par with Columbia and Penn.</p>
<p>Now, I’m obviously not thrilled that Chicago is getting beat here, but I remain optimistic on the issue. Why? Because at this pace, Chicago will be doing very well in a few years. As long as we keep pace with Columbia/Penn on a per alumni basis, total donations are bound to increase significantly over the next few years, as the University’s total number of alumni rises on a greater percentage basis than our peers due to increased class sizes. Additionally, as Chicago moves from being an institution focused on academia and highly theoretical matters to also dabbling into more practical issues, it will likely have a larger alumni presence in the corporate world in the future, encouraging companies to invest in the University’s research, etc.</p>
<p>Ultimately, I’m not worried at all. Chicago has been placing around or below 20th in the nation for fundraising for quite some time now, and despite that, the University is as healthy as it’s ever been, with our professors having the 3rd highest compensation in the nation and with financial aid increasing significantly over the past few years. Even if fundraising remained constant from here on out, I don’t think the University would have too much of a problem attaining what it wants to attain. Regardless, the future outlook of donations seems to be very strong as Chicago graduates greater class sizes and becomes more of a practical institution. In 10 years, I imagine that Chicago will have no problem being in the top 10 for fundraising in total dollars.</p>
<p>(It’s also significant that most of Chicago’s donations are likely coming from people who were affiliated with the institution from the 80s to the 00s, when the University was hardly at its peak. In 10 years, the primary donors are going to start coming from people associated with the university from the 90s to the 10s, where people were a little more pleased with their University experience on average.)</p>