Alumni donations and university reputation

Philanthropy and the sustaining of global elite university domination

“…Philanthropy by its own unequal distribution adds to the material and symbolic advantages of GEUs, boosting reputation and with each incremental gain in reputation, tangible returns follow, accruing further reputational gains (Münch, 2014: 82–83); while, at the other end of the spectrum, marginalized students at universities lacking philanthropic support can suffer from resource deprivation, identified by Hamilton et al (2021) in their study of one University of California campus as a form of ‘institutional racism’. This is the Matthew or snowball effect in operation whereby GEU ‘alumni donations raise a university’s reputation, which in turn generates additional alumni donations’ (Faria et al, 2019: 155). The outcome is a virtual monopoly at the summit of the rankings used to stratify global and national fields of HE, sustaining the dominance of GEUs (Hazelkorn, 2011).…”

“…The highest-ranking national universities now actively compete in the highly stratified global field of HE (Marginson and Van der Wende, 2007a). The landscape is one of an ongoing struggle for material and symbolic resources as reputational gains boost material gains and vice versa (Faria et al, 2019; Hazelkorn, 2011). Existing dominant players that avoid major strategic errors are thus able to consolidate their upper echelon positions, while subordinate players dogged by poor reputations and limited resources find it ever more difficult to ascend field hierarchies.…”

The Flutie and Anti-Flutie Effect: The Impact of Football Championships and Athletic Malfeasance on the University

“…The correlation between athletics and the university has also been examined by looking beyond academic metrics, with one of these additional factors being the relationship between donor behavior and athletics (Monks, 2003; Rhoads and Gerking, 2000). Faria et al (2019) found a snowball effect for donations that growing donations help grow more donations. Their model suggests that universities should invest in reputation-enhancing aspects of the university (arguing the results of this study are valuable not just for what happens within the peer-ranking category but also for how university decisions impact future donations).…”