I recently attended a Big Numbered Year reunion at my East Coast college. It was great to see old friends, recognizing our younger selves beneath gray hair and lined faces. It was not so great to realize how many of us have already departed this life — an emotion the university exploited in its fundraising pitches to those in attendance.
Like many U.S. higher education institutions, my school is asking its older alumni for something bigger than whatever we may have given before. Colleges want money from beyond the grave. With mortality knocking at our doors (and messing with our knees), we baby boomers and some Gen Xers are being asked to leave behind a substantial gift to the colleges we attended. Given our cohort’s size, that could produce a big pile of bucks.
Of course many universities, along with thousands of campus buildings and endowed faculty seats, bear the names of philanthropists from past centuries. Think Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Stanford, Scripps, et al. But the current wave of estate requests pushes deeper into the middle class than in previous generations, fundraising professionals explained to me.
At the reunion, my friends and I discussed the possible gifts mostly with gallows humor. Many rejected the idea outright, citing other needs in a society trying to cope with homelessness and climate change. Some said their kids deserved the full inheritance. But I found myself among the classmates who seemed like we might be seduced to some extent. Despite some lingering mixed feelings about the college’s already large endowment, I am considering such a donation. And beyond any possible modest gift, the request has pushed me to face my mortality more directly and consider what really matters to me in the long run.
I spoke to a development official at a University of California campus about the wider pool of alumni now being approached for estate gifts. He told me that a lot of “thought and care” goes into how the schools make such a suggestion. The request itself, he diplomatically noted, “makes people think that life is closer to the end than the beginning.”
Regardless of details, the emotional appeals are basically the same: Since you will be dead soon enough, wouldn’t it be nice to be remembered at the campus that helped shape you? You could give back to the place that provided you a crucial leg up into a successful career, where you made many friends and maybe even found a spouse. And if you were a financial aid recipient, as I was, you could help future kids like yourself up the college ladder.
All this may have special significance for alumni who want to thank the many public California universities that were founded or much expanded to accommodate the crowd of young people who came of age in the 1960s and 1970s. Many others, however, may feel such debts were taken care of by all the taxes and tuition (very low in their day) they paid. Fundraising officials told me that part of their job is convincing boomers that tax revenue no longer covers the cost to run these UC and Cal State campuses.
More broadly, higher education is held in lower esteem than it was 20 years ago, and more people question its value. These sentiments, along with political and cultural issues, make a development officer’s job that much more challenging. In the last year, some donors have pulled back or delayed gifts because they don’t like how a college handled protests over the war in Gaza or issues involving racial diversity. Others scoff at donation requests after they see how large the schools’ endowments are and how bloated administrative salaries are. Some remain miffed because their own children or their friends’ kids were not admitted to the school. And many alumni obviously think their money would be better left to medical, religious, cultural or civic causes, if they want to leave any to a charity at all.
But if the arguments to leave a decent sum to one’s college strike a chord, higher education institutions offer expert advisors to guide you through tax shelters and inheritance laws, while suggesting all sorts of financial plans for bequests. Maybe leave the house to the university. Transfer a slice of your 401(k) investments to the college. You could take out a life insurance policy and name your school as beneficiary. Think about giving a big lump now and letting the school provide you an annuity for the rest of your life.
If my wife and I have any money left when we die, most of it will go to our daughter. And if we decide to leave any to the college, it certainly won’t be enough to support a new cancer research lab or establish a study abroad program. I might give something to the school’s financial aid fund that helped me back in my undergraduate days. I like the idea of helping to expose young people to a universe of learning that they might not otherwise be able to encounter.
Back when I was a student, the scary question that my college helped me answer was “What should I do with my life?” Now that school is asking another question but with the same sense of urgency behind it: The clock is ticking.
Larry Gordon is a former higher education writer for the Los Angeles Times and EdSource.
