Penn Cracks Nation’s Top 10 in Private Donations

Terracotta Heraldry on the Duhring Wing.
| Steven Minicola, University of Pennsylvania Communications.

The University of Pennsylvania ranked seventh among private U.S. colleges in private giving in 2014, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Penn garnered $483,569,483 in private gifts, as reported by the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s Philanthropy 400 project, just ahead of Columbia’s $469,968,713 and behind Cornell (Cornell?!?), which took in $546,087,720.

Tops on the list? Harvard, with a stunning $1,155,610,000. Penn State couldn’t crack the public-college Top 10, which was led by the University of Texas at Austin.

The CHE reports that overall, private donations to private schools over the past 25 years are up by more than 70 percent; at Harvard alone, the 2014 take was 45 percent higher than that in 2013. Gifts to public universities since 1990 have nearly doubled. Guess schools need all that cash to stay in compliance with the ever-expanding rules and regs the Department of Education hands down. Good to know Amy Gutmann‘s $3.5-million-a-year job is secure.