A report in the media attracted the attention of many. An alumna of a well-known technology institute of Rajasthan contributed $1 million to the institute’s $100 million Endowment Fund. Her contributions will support scholarships for girls and PhD fellowships. Another alumnus of the same institute donated $1 million to the Endowment Fund of the alma mater towards setting up the Centre of Excellence in Sustainability. Are these small beginnings indicators of the road ahead for higher education in India?
Our colleges and universities suffer from the perennial shortage of funds. Mainstream academic institutes mostly survive on government aid. The allotments are primarily spent on paying salaries to the teaching and the non-teaching staff, leaving paltry sums for development activities. The situation is worse in colleges and universities run by state governments. Colleges and universities run by or dependent on governments can come out of this perpetual crisis of funds if initiatives are taken to channelise voluntary contributions from the alumni.
Guidelines of the University Grants Commission allow Central universities and institutes to accept funds from alumni associations to support development and other initiatives provided a separate account is kept for the purpose and the amount is spent transparently. The University of Delhi Foundation was set up in 2022 to manage the Delhi University Endowment Fund. IITs have stepped up efforts in recent years to reach out to their alumni for resource support. IIMs and Indian Schools of Business have also established endowments. However, similar initiatives are missing in the case of universities, especially those run by state governments.
On paper
In Bengal, contributions to universities are normally credited to the University Fund along with income from fees, fines, loans, advances and so on. There are provisions for universities to create “separate special funds for the administration of Students’ Welfare, Endowments, Donations and Gifts, Trust or specific grants or grants for other special purposes” by ordinances. However, such provisions mostly remain in statutes when it comes to accepting contributions from alumni or alumni associations.
Universities need to be proactive if they are to encourage the alumni to contribute funds for development. Setting up a ‘foundation’, an independent legal entity, is perhaps the first step for a university to support various activities through grants coming from the alumni or their associations. A proper record of the alumni database is necessary for universities to inform their alumni when they need funds and how the funds made available by them were used.
High schools and undergraduate colleges run or aided by the government cannot accept funds from alumni associations in most states. The Gujarat Public Universities Act, 2023 recently allowed colleges to collect contributions from alumni associations. In 2017, the Odisha government brought out the ‘Mo School Abiyan’ to connect alumni and alumni associations with the development of schools. Schools and colleges, run or supported by state governments, may begin by setting up Endowments to receive funds from alumni associations to support causes dear to them. Such Endowments may be formed in the form of a Trust and the Managing Committee of the school may run the Trust.
Good education is expensive. Herein lies the role of mobilising funds from the alumni that can be supplemented to meet the requirements that remain unmet from government grants.