Gifts to colleges and universities declined almost 12 percent in the 2009 fiscal year, to $27.85 billion, according to the Council for Aid to Educationâ??s annual survey of voluntary support of education. It was the steepest decline in the surveyâ??s 53-year history.
The universities that raised the most money in 2009 were Stanford ($640 million), Harvard ($602 million) and Cornell ($447 million). Among public institutions, the top fund-raisers were University of California, Los Angeles ($352 million), University of Wisconsin-Madison ($342 million) and University of California, San Francisco ($300 million).