Higher education had a very good year. That’s the news from the Chronicle of Philanthropy, which reports that “during an election year soaked in populism, some of America’s biggest philanthropists bestowed an unusually large chunk of their charity on colleges and universities, including several elite institutions.” How large? Colleges and universities received almost half of the $5.6 billion given away by the top 50 donors in 2016, a larger share by far than in any of the past five years.
Is this, as the Chronicle implies, a message sent by America’s wealthy to show their support of elite academia in the face of a populist uprising? Not really. Rather, if America’s most successful businesspeople are making a vote of confidence, it is not in academia in general, but in scientific research—and medical research in particular.
