‘Corporations are beginning to recognize the legitimacy of private support for public higher education.’ : Private Firms’ New Largess to Public Schools Benefits CSUN

Sandra Metzger said that, when she first started talking about seeking private funds to build facilities at California State University, Northridge, acquaintances in local businesses and industry told her not to bother.

“They said . . . the companies are never going to support a state university,” said Metzger, development director for CSUN’s engineering school.

Eight years later, Metzger told the story at the school’s recent dedication of a $1-million laboratory--paid for by 14 corporations.

The microwave-antenna laboratory is one of several large private-sector gifts CSUN has received in the past two years. It also is one of many examples of how public colleges and universities across the nation have become more successful at raising private dollars that were once reserved principally for private institutions.

A main reason for that success, according to fund-raisers and higher-education analysts, is a growing realization by many corporations that they depend on public universities to produce employable graduates.

Also, public universities have been driven to raise private-sector funds as federal and state revenues become more scarce, university officials say.

Corporations gave much of the $3.9 million in private donations to CSUN last year, said Donald C. Landis, CSUN director of development. The school took in less than half that amount four years ago, he said. The California State University system received $47.5 million in gifts last year, an amount that also has doubled in four years, according to Robert Maners, CSU development director.

According to university sources, besides the microwave-antenna lab, CSUN has received over the last several years:

$1.7 million worth of high-tech drafting computers and printers from Bausch & Lomb.

$2.7 million worth of land from an anonymous donor. The land is to be sold and the profits channeled toward a new campus building to house a center for communicative disorders, which will include the National Center on Deafness that has its headquarters at CSUN. The building will be the first constructed entirely with private funds at the Northridge campus.

$500,000 from the W. P. Whitsett Foundation for an endowed professor’s chair in California history.

A number of smaller corporate gifts, including $180,000 in unrestricted cash donated since July to the engineering school and nearly $10,000 donated last year to the CSUN minority business program.

“These things are indications of a changing attitude on the part of corporations and foundations that are beginning to recognize the legitimacy of private support for public higher education,” Landis said.

Nationally, private schools took about 51% of the $1.3 billion in corporate contributions to four-year institutions in the 1984-’85 school year, contrasted with 60% in 1978-’79, according to the New York-based Council for Financial Aid to Education Inc., a nonprofit business group that encourages private aid to higher education.

“That’s a very fast drop,” said Paul R. Miller, the council’s vice president. “Some years ago, the corporate donors by and large favored private institutions over public institutions. They reasoned, of course, that the public institutions were tax-supported. . . .

“Now they realize that much of the research that is done and many of the people they are hiring come from these public institutions. And, as those colleges have had to build up their resources, state governments and the federal government have cut back; costs have risen and the public institutions across the country have turned to serious private-source fund raising as never before.”

In California, state higher-education spending under Gov. George Deukmejian has seen generous budget increases totaling nearly 50% over the last three years.

Austerity Budget Announced

But the past two months have brought a reminder of the pitfalls of depending on a state budget. The governor this month announced an austerity budget calling for a relatively modest 4% increase for the University of California and California State University systems, as the state reaches a constitutionally required spending limit.

In December, Deukmejian announced a 2% mid-year cut in the current budget for nearly all state administrative costs, but the universities later were told to cut only about 1%.

One way to give public schools some independence from the ebb and flow of the state budget is to seek private donations, some of which are earmarked for specific projects, such as the CSUN microwave-antenna laboratory, Landis said.

Three years ago, the engineering school’s antenna lab had “antiquated equipment,” said Edmond Gillespie, professor of microwave engineering. Some equipment was mounted on the engineering building’s roof, and a relatively small, non-computerized “anechoic chamber” was used to measure how much microwave energy an antenna reflects or absorbs. On the building’s ground floor lay a spacious room used to store the university’s admissions records.

It was in that room, next to a new, automated anechoic chamber, that Gillespie, Metzger, CSUN President James W. Cleary and representatives of several of the 14 donor companies gathered last November for the dedication of the new lab.

They Need the People

Asked how he and Metzger persuaded companies to donate, Gillespie waved his hand toward the telecommunications executives in the room and said, “All of these companies need people with training in microwaves.”

“We can’t find microwave engineers--they aren’t being graduated,” said Gerald S. Picus, director of Hughes Aircraft Co.’s Technical Education Center. The company donated $175,000 to the lab. “We were concerned with where our interests were served.”

“It really doesn’t matter to us whether it’s a public school or a private school,” said Joseph H. Pape of Scientific Atlanta, which gave $215,000. “It comes down to those schools that are active in the areas that we are.”

A key part of CSUN’s development strategy, according to Landis, is lining up the school’s programs with the needs of local industry. Because of the number of high-tech firms in Southern California, for example, the School of Engineering and Computer Science rakes in the lion’s share of the university’s private receipts, said Landis, who describes the microwave lab and other gifts as modest gains.

“We’re still in a building mode,” he said, “but we’re beginning to gather momentum.” After he was hired a year ago from the University of Houston, Landis hired an assistant to help him reinstitute CSUN’s dormant annual fund campaign, in which parents and alumni are solicited for donations. The campaign, he said, is a first step toward soliciting larger donations from companies and foundations.

Telephone solicitors check donors’ employers against a list of companies with “matching gift” programs, Landis said. The more often CSUN’s name shows up on a company’s matching-gift list, he said, the more receptive a company may be toward giving its own grant to CSUN.

School’s Support Counts

Landis added that potential donors are far less likely to donate to a school not supported by its alumni and parents.

Landis said that, in its first nine months of soliciting pledges, the campaign is expected to raise $150,000 in undesignated funds.

CSU launched its systemwide “lost alumni campaign” in 1985, ostensibly to find graduates whose current addresses were unknown. Each alumnus found is someone who can be solicited for money, said Maners, CSU development director.

Maners was hired a year ago, after 28 years as a fund-raiser at USC, a leader among fund-raising private schools. USC ranked 13th on the Council on Financial Aid to Education’s list of top corporate fund-raising schools last year, according to the council.

“I don’t view it as competition,” said Roger Olson, USC vice president for university relations. “In any institution’s circumstances, there will be a shortfall between the general ability to pay and the needs.” USC is in the midst of a six-year, $557-million capital development fund-raising drive and expects its gift total for this fiscal year to reach $81 million, Olson said.

Of the 10 schools that raised the most money--all major research institutions--six were public schools, including UCLA and UC Berkeley, the financial aid council’s Miller said.

Although public institutions are collecting an increasingly large share of the pool of corporate donations, private universities still garner about twice as much as public institutions in total voluntary contributions, Miller said. Private schools also take in far more overall donations when computed on a per-student basis, he said.

Record Year for Pepperdine

For example, Pepperdine University, a private school in Malibu, collected a record $23 million in gifts in the 1985-86 fiscal year, a university spokesman said. That figure is nearly half of CSU’s $47.5-million take that year. But Pepperdine has an enrollment of about 6,500 students; CSU has 333,000.

Although public and private university administrators downplay the idea of competition for private funds, Miller points out that the money available is limited.

“Of course they’re in competition,” Miller said.

Public-private partnerships also are being employed as one way to move ahead with large capital projects. CSUN is planning a $150-million, 16-year North Campus expansion, in which income from commercial use of the land and money from long-term leases to a private developer would finance the construction of a hotel, athletic stadium, student dormitories and other facilities.

At Cal State Fullerton, officials received CSU trustees’ approval in November for an on-campus, 224-room Marriott Hotel that would finance a $6.7-million football stadium and sports complex.