$400 Million From Kluge for Columbia
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Columbia University today is expected to receive a pledge of more than $400 million, one of the largest individual gifts in the history of higher education.
The donation, first reported on the Web site of the Wall Street Journal, comes from a 92-year-old Columbia alumnus who has already given tens of millions of dollars to his alma mater, John Kluge.
A vice president of the philanthropic John W. Kluge foundation, David Finkelstein, confirmed last night that the foundation would donate more than $400 million, to be directed toward financial aid. Mr. Finkelstein said Mr. Kluge loves Columbia “very dearly,” but he declined to offer further details about the gift.
Mr. Kluge, an immigrant from Germany, graduated from Columbia in 1937 and went on to earn his fortune in the broadcast industry, buying and selling television and radio stations and later branching into restaurants, among other businesses.
Forbes magazine listed Mr. Kluge’s net worth at $9 billion in 2006, and he has given millions of dollars to various philanthropic causes, including the Library of Congress. Tax forms for his foundation list donations to recipients varying from cancer research organizations to a Shakespeare company.
Only four individual gifts in higher education have been greater than $400 million, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education, which has a list of large donations since 1967. The gift would be the highest ever received by Columbia, which is currently listed by the Chronicle as receiving a high of $200 million from Dawn M. Greene and the Jerome L. Greene Foundation in 2006.
The expected donation will help cut into the university’s ambitious capital campaign, for which Columbia hopes to raise $4 billion between 2006 and 2011.
The gift comes at a time when Columbia’s financial aid department has been in the national spotlight, with a state-led inquiry raising the possibility that the college favored certain student lenders over others, allegedly steering students unfairly to specific lenders. The executive director of Columbia’s undergraduate financial aid office, David Charlow, has been suspended over ties to a loan company.
A spokesman for the university declined to comment and would not confirm the facts of the Wall Street Journal article.
