Record USC Fund Drive Brings In $2.85 Billion

USC will report today a tally of $2.85 billion for its 9 1/2-year fund-raising drive, a record sum for a single university campaign.

The pledges and cash gifts put USC narrowly ahead of the previous record of just over $2.84 billion chalked up by Columbia University. Columbia’s 10-year campaign ended in 2000.

The only other American universities to surpass the $2-billion mark are Harvard, which brought in $2.6 billion in a five-year drive that closed in 1999; and UCLA, which already has reached $2.19 billion in a 10-year effort scheduled to end in 2005.

USC’s announcement about its recently completed campaign comes as some colleges and universities have been hurt by the soft economy and weak stock market.

Figures due to be reported within a few weeks for the 2001-02 fiscal year may show the first overall fund-raising decline in education since the mid-1970s. Some fund-raisers also worry about collecting big pledges from high-tech entrepreneurs and others whose fortunes have dwindled as the stock market has languished.

Even so, USC and certain other institutions are raking in higher-than-expected donations.

“We’re hearing that many institutions will be reporting their best years on record this fiscal year, and in many cases, they seem to be defying gravity in relation to the economy,” said Vance Peterson, president of the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, a Washington-based group representing university fund-raisers.

“That’s a sign of the importance that donors give to higher education, and it speaks to the long-standing relationship that institutions have developed with individuals of substantial wealth.”

USC’s “Building on Excellence” campaign began in July 1993 as a seven-year effort to raise $1 billion. The campaign’s goal later was boosted to $1.5 billion and then to $2 billion, and the length of the drive was extended to the end of 2002.

The campaign included four previously reported gifts of $100 million or more. The money from the campaign is being used to fund, among other things, 125 endowed faculty positions and a separate $100-million effort to recruit star professors.

It also will fund an expansion of the medical school and improved athletic facilities, as well as new buildings for the business and engineering schools and the soon-to-open facility for the Neurogenetic Institute.

The successful campaign caps a decade in which USC substantially raised its academic ranking and admission standards. The university says the average SAT scores of its entering freshman class climbed from 1,070 (out of a possible 1,600) in the fall of 1991, to 1,335 in the fall of 2003. In the closely watched U.S. News & World Report rankings, USC climbed from 48th place among major research universities a decade ago to 31st (tied with UC San Diego, the University of Wisconsin and Brandeis University) in the latest poll.

Alan Kreditor, who directs fund-raising for USC as its senior vice president for university advancement, said the “dramatic rise in USC’s quality helps explain why donors are reaching deeper into their pockets to help the institution.” That improvement, he said, “has been the main attraction here.”