Chris Rickert?s Thursday column, “Big donors don?t make a big impact on tuition at UW-Madison,” misses the mark by focusing on the fact that philanthropy does not lower the price of tuition. In 2011, the UW Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to raising, investing and distributing donor gift funds to support UW-Madison, transferred more than $220 million in philanthropy to enhance the quality of the people, programs and facilities at the university. It is this enhanced quality funded by a source other than tuition that makes UW-Madison a great value (i.e., quality per unit of cost).
Office of Strategic Communication