Donations are an increasingly important component of UK universities’ income, but there’s still a lot we can learn about philanthropic behaviour from alumni.
A recent CASE-More report shows that in spite of all the turbulence around us and mounting student debt, UK universities’ philanthropic income records were broken once again in 2022, reaching £1.5 billion – and alumni have a significant role in this.
With public funding for universities dropping to its lowest since the 1990s the importance of this income for the sector is clear. But benefits vary hugely between universities, and remain concentrated in a relatively small set of prestigious universities with Oxford and Cambridge accounting for close to half of the funds committed by donors over the last decade.
Our research shows that those universities seeking to boost their donation income should look to building students’ sense of connection with the institution – and in passing, we’d also like to suggest that canonical transactional accounts of higher education are too simplistic.
