Good & Bad Times

Upon the desk of many a gloomy university budgetmaker John Price Jones Corp., fund raisers, last week placed a surprising document. It was a study of gifts and bequests to a sample group of 49 U. S. universities, which in 17 years have received all told $770,913,560. The surprise lay in the fact that these universities as a group had received almost as much from philanthropists after Depression as before it. Their receipts each year from 1920 to 1929 averaged $45,573,000, each year since 1929, $45,095,000.

But beyond indicating that the sources of university wealth were as rich as ever, the figures were cold comfort to most colleges. Annual gifts and bequests to small colleges (under 1,000) dropped off 37% during Depression, to women's colleges 40%. Responsible for holding the total up were three universities that had good times in bad. The big three, which accounted for more than half the gifts and bequests received by the 49 universities during Depression, were Yale, Harvard and University of Chicago.

Harvard did almost as well during Depression as during prosperity--$70,969,589 in nine years between 1920 and 1929, $60,261,527 in eight years since 1929. Chicago did better, with $30,650,030 before 1929, $48,604,771 afterward. Yale, which started an endowment drive in 1926, reaped a bumper harvest in Depression's soil. In the 1920s it raised $64,199,898, in the 1930s, $91,959,043.

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