University of Chicago donor could give more to HE

Hedge fund manager Kenneth Griffin, who is giving US$125 million to the University of Chicago, said he’s committed to donating many times more to higher education to keep the United States competitive in science and economics, write Janet Lorin and Erik Schatzker for Bloomberg.

“I expect over the remainder of my life to give frankly well over a billion or several billion dollars to higher education,” Griffin said last week in an interview on Bloomberg Television. “I think this is so important to our society that every single young man and young woman in our country has access to our best schools and our best schools have the ability to fund the research that will keep America competitive in the global landscape.”

The gift to the University of Chicago, where he has been a trustee since 2014, will provide financial aid to students in its influential economics department and expand faculty resources and research, the university said on Wednesday in a statement. It’s the second-largest donation in the university’s history and is the latest in a flurry of mega-gifts to universities, aided in part by the record-high stock market.
Full report on the Bloomberg site