President Andrew K. Benton says the drive will focus on improvements for students and staff as well as savings.
SHANNON KELLY
Perspectives Editor
Pepperdine’s major fundraising campaign advanced in its planning phase Nov. 1st as each of the university’s schools and departments submitted written statements to Vice President for Advancement and Public Affairs Keith Hinkle that described their specific funding wants and needs.
“Soon I will sit down and begin to vet those plans and prioritize them,” President Andrew K. Benton said. “Now we have their dreams, but we have to go back and make sure all of the numbers are right.”
Formulating specific numbers will take most of 2007 since planning must coincide with the desires of so many different factions of the university, according to Benton. Along with Pepperdine’s various schools, the athletics department, overseas programs and alumni are all considered in preparing the detailed plans needed to move forward with the fundraising drive.
“It is a very participatory process; one ultimately that will find its way to the Board of Regents for their approval,” Benton said.
With the campaign planning progressing, Benton stressed the importance of building the University’s endowment in order to compete with top universities, to offset campus operating costs and to maintain Pepperdine’s financial aid capabilities.
“For Pepperdine University to perform where it is considered nationally, we should have about a 1.2 billion endowment and we have less than half of that,” Benton said.
Pepperdine’s endowment ranks about 115th in the nation, but the University is generally 50 to 55th in overall rankings. “So we are outperforming our predictors,” Benton said. “One drive as part of this next fundraising campaign is going to be to double this endowment.”
He also explained endowment’s roll in offsetting the difference in the university’s $250 million operating costs and what tuition funds, which is only about 60 percent of the operating budget.
Each year, however, only five percent of the endowment is spent on operating costs in order to ensure a continually increasing endowment.
“As farmers would say, ‘we’re not eating our seed corn,”’ Benton said.
Benton also says improving endowment will lower the pressure to increase tuition as external university costs increase.
“Many institutions that have to respond by radically increasing tuition and I don’t’ want us to have to do that,” he said.
Along with helping compensate for increasing operational costs, endowment not only slows tuition hikes, but it also provides more funds for the 75 percent of Pepperdine students who receive some form of University financial aid.
Pepperdine awards more than $35 million in institutional grants and scholarships per academic year according to Director of Financial Assistance Janet Lockheart. Federal and state grants total more than $5.5 million and student loans total more than $12 million.
Benton says that because of Pepperdine’s demographic, most students are ineligible for need-based federal grants and loans, but he understands that Pepperdine’s tuition is difficult to afford even for those unable to obtain federal aid.
“If we’re going to compete at highest levels, we need more financial aid available and endowment makes that possible,” he said.
Students, Freshman Erica Freeman and Junior Christie Zona, both say their financial aid offers from Pepperdine were important factors in their decisions to attend the university.
“I would not have been able to come here without the aid they offered me,” Freeman said, who receives a Christian Service grant.
Zona says she was considering the University of Southern California before she decided to come to Pepperdine partly because of the aid package it offered her.
“I’m here on a pretty significant academic scholarship,” she said. “I wouldn’t be able to afford being here without it.”
11-09-2006
