Indians Donate Millions to U.S. Universities, Forget India

Bangalore: Top Indian industrialists are funding alumni base of Harvard University, reveals a recent survey by the U.S. News Short List. Meanwhile, the Indian universities are suffering from lack of contemporary IT infrastructure, absence of best practices and low student gross enrollment ratios (GER).  Yet, the top industrialists choose to invest westward instead of directing their funds towards Indian universities.

As per the news survey conducted annually among 1,800 schools and reports of two-year alumni, Princeton University was rated on the top, making it the most loved university for donations. It is also to be noted that unlike Indian universities, which are largely funded by tuition fees, western universities are mostly funded by donation. For example, only about 20 percent of Harvard expenditures are met by tuition fee collections while nearly 50 percent comes from donation. A significant amount of the donation comes from its alumni base.

A number of studies that are conducted to study alumni donation patterns reveal some relevant questions being asked like the age of the donor, what affiliation the donor has and what is the motivation of the giver. A few studies seem to suggest that some alumni donate with the hope that their children would get an easy passage into the same Ivy League institutions. Even when Anand Mahindra joined the ranks by giving the highest donation to any humanities discipline at Harvard, questions were raised whether the donation was timed with his two sons seeking college admissions.