Duke Receives $10 Million From Gates Fund for Financial Aid
By Matthew Keenan
Feb. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Duke University received its second
contribution in a week from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,
a $10 million grant for need-based academic scholarships.
The Gates gift will set up a $9 million endowed fund for
undergraduate scholarships and $1 million for business school
students, the Durham, North Carolina, university said in a
statement today. Duke, which is seeking to raise $300 million for
endowed financial aid funds, has now gathered $216 million since
December 2005.
``Our endowment covers only a portion of the need'' for
financial aid, Duke President Richard Brodhead said in the
statement. The grant helps ``ensure that a Duke education remains
available to all qualified students, regardless of their family's
financial situation.''
The university announced Feb. 12 that the Seattle-based
Gates foundation gave $15 million for DukeEngage, a public
service program for Duke students in the U.S. and abroad. The
gift, matched by $15 million from Duke's endowment, will pay for
participants' travel costs and other expenses.
Duke has a $4.5 billion endowment, the 16th largest in the
U.S., according to the National Association of College and
University Business Officers.
The school spent $47 million on need-based financial aid for
undergraduates in the last academic year, an increase of $20
million from five years earlier. Overall, Duke devoted $143
million to financial aid grants, with one-fourth coming from
endowed funds, the statement said.
The Gates Foundation, founded by Microsoft Corp. Chairman
Bill Gates, is the world's largest charitable fund, with $33
billion in assets, according to its Web site. Melinda Gates, Bill
Gates' wife and co-chairwoman of the foundation, is a graduate of
Duke and the university's Fuqua School of Business.
The Gates family gave $20 million to Duke in 1998 to help
establish the University Scholars Program, which encourages
interdisciplinary study. There have been 154 scholars since the
program's inception, including 80 now enrolled at Duke.
To contact the reporter on this story:
Matthew Keenan in Boston at
mkeenan6@bloomberg.net
.
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Glenn Holdcraft at
gholdcraft@bloomberg.net
.
Last Updated: February 20, 2007 14:11 EST
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