Stanford Tops Harvard in Gifts

Harvard dropped to second place among American universities last year in the total value of gifts and bequests received, according to an annual report published last week in New York.

Figures prepared by John Price Jones Co., Inc., institutional financing consultants and managers, show Harvard's private financial support in 1962-63 as $36,003,000, down more than $5 million from the previous academic year.

Stanford University, with $28,504,000 in gifts, led the 26 other large colleges and universities whose finances were studied.

James A. Rousmaniere '40, director of the Harvard College Fund, explained yesterday that Stanford's figures had been temporarily swollen by a fund-raising campaign and a Ford Foundation grant.

Harvard's receipts dropped off, he went on, as the last pledges were collected from the $82.5 million Program for Harvard College of 1957-60.

Rousmaniere cautioned against directly comparing Harvard and Stanford, but said that gifts to the University were "bound to stay as high as $30 million, anyway," in future years.

If so, they will be substantially above Stanford's figures, which have averaged about $20 million between 1958 and 1962, before the beginning of its current fund drive.

Although gifts to the University as a whole declined in 1962-63, Rousmaniere noted that the Harvard College Fund had netted $1.7 million, which is $300,000 more than it made in 1961-62. The Fund has collected $1.6 million so far this year and should meet its $2.5 million goal by June, he said.

After Harvard and Stanford, the leading universities and the amounts they received during the past academic year were Columbia ($23,929,000), Yale ($19,087,000), M.I.T. ($17,529,000), and Chicago ($17,038,000). Radcliffe, one of eight women's colleges studied, received $1,668,000, less than Wellesley ($3,391,000), Smith ($3,273,000), Mount Holyoke ($3,050,000), and Bryn Mawr ($2,638,000).

Harvard's average of gifts and bequests over the past three, ten, and 43 years is higher than that of any other school. Since 1920, the University has received over half a billion dollars in private aid.