8 Largest Private Donations to Universities by the Billionaires

Nowadays, rich people donate insanely huge amounts of money to various charity funds. Moreover, a lot of ultra-rich prefer donating their money to universities and research institutes. Well, it is actually some kind of a trend for the modern billionaires now and some people even say that Robert Smith himself has started this trend. So who are those kinds and insanely rich people who contribute their money into education and why do they do that is what we are going to figure out here. Have a look at our list of the 8 largest private donations to universities by the billionaires.

1. Michael Bloomberg's $1.8 billion donation to Johns Hopkins University

According to Inside Higher Ed, this very donation is the largest donation to a single American university ever. At the same time, Bloomberg himself said that he wants the colleges to admit gifted students regardless of their financial statement and that is exactly why he donated that much money. 

2. Anil Agarwal’s $1 billion donation to a research university in Odisha

According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, in 2006 Agarwal made the biggest donation to a university at that time, which was 1/3 of his total net worth. Today, due to the inflation this sum equals $1.2 billion.

3. Over 10 years Gordon Moore and his wife, Betty, donated $600 million to the California Institute of Technology

This insanely huge amount of money the couple donated to the California Institute of Technology in 2001 and at that time it was the largest donation to a single educational institution. Nowadays, this sum equals $866 million.

4. On behalf of her and her husband, Herbert, Florence Irving donated $600 million to Columbia University and NewYork-Presbyterian cancer research

Florence Irving made this donation in 2017, a year after her husband passed away from cancer. Herbert Irving made his fortune through Global Frozen Foods (Sysco).

5. Knight’s $500 million donation to Oregon University

In 2016 Phil Knight and his wife, Penny, made a $500 million donation to a new science complex at the University of Oregon. Today this amount of money equals $539 million.

6. Knight’s $500 million donation to Oregon Health & Science University to fund cancer research

The billionaire made this donation in 2015 and it wasn’t his last donation to an educational institution.

7. Last year the wife of a real estate billionaire Sanford Diller, Helen Diller made a donation of $500 million to the University of California-San Francisco

According to UCSF website, the money was spent on building a new hospital on the university’s campus.

8. Terry Gou’s $454 million donation to a cancer hospital at National Taiwan University

The founder of the electronics company Foxconn made this huge donation in 2007 and, according to Taipei Times, it was the biggest donation to a medical university in the past 40 years. Nowadays, the sum of his donation equals $559 million.