A Gift to All of Los Angeles : Walter Annenberg will give USC $120 million as part of $365 million in educational grants

At a time when institutions of higher education across the nation are facing severe budget problems and when Los Angeles is struggling to regain its confidence after being battered by riots and an ongoing recession, former U.S. Ambassador Walter H. Annenberg has made a financial contribution that should help on both fronts.

Sunday the former newspaper and magazine magnate, now the head of the Annenberg Foundation, announced the largest single private donation ever made to education in this country--$365 million. One of the two largest grants in that record sum, $120 million, will go to the University of Southern California. An equal amount will go to the University of Pennsylvania. Twenty-five million dollars will be donated to Harvard University and $100 million to Annenberg’s former prep school in New Jersey.

USC is already the site of the Annenberg School of Communication, established with the help of a grant from the Annenberg Foundation in 1972. USC President Steven B. Sample said Annenberg’s latest gift will be used for student scholarships and to establish an Annenberg Center for Communication that will link five academic programs at USC: the existing Annenberg School, the schools of journalism and cinema-television, the communications component of the School of Engineering and the department of communication arts in the School of Letters and Sciences.

Sample’s hope is that the Annenberg Center will become the focal point for studying all facets of modern communications media. Clearly, as the home of a motion picture and entertainment industry whose influence is felt the world over, Los Angeles is an appropriate place for such a center. It can focus not only on technological and economic opportunities that mass communication will offer in the 21st Century but also the ethical and social responsibilities they will surely pose.

Annenberg’s generosity will also benefit the increasing number of loan-burdened college students who cannot afford to continue their educations at private universities. As other scholarships and fellowships dry up, Annenberg’s support will allow worthy but needy students to complete their degrees.

But Annenberg’s gift is a boost not just to USC but to Los Angeles. For, unlike some other pillars of the local economy--it is the largest single private employer in the city--USC is not about to move to Arizona. It is in Southern California to stay. Annenberg’s gift is a vote of confidence that USC’s future, like that of Los Angeles’ most visible industry, will remain bright.