Columbia to Receive $400 Million for Student Aid

Correction Appended

Columbia University will announce a gift of $400 million today, one of the largest ever to an American university, from John Werner Kluge, 92, a billionaire who has long been one of the university’s strongest supporters.

Columbia’s president, Lee Bollinger, said last night: “Obviously, this is an extraordinary gift by any standard. It’s huge in its consequences and effects on the university.”

The gift, which is to come from Mr. Kluge’s estate when he dies, is to be used for financial aid to students, officials said. More commonly, philanthropic donations are used to pay for a new building or endow a chair.

Mr. Kluge had previously given Columbia $110 million, including his Kluge Scholars Program, which has supported more than 500 Columbia College students. It provides four-year scholarships to 40 to 60 needy students a year, chosen by the admissions office.

At Columbia’s 2004 black-tie celebration of the program and his 90th birthday, Mr. Kluge discussed his commitment to scholarships.

“I’d rather by far invest in people than buildings,” he said. “If I can infuse a mind to improve itself, that’ll pass on to their children, and to their children’s children.” He also reflected on the financial aid he received at Columbia: “If it hadn’t been for Columbia, my path in life would have been completely different.”

Last night, Mr. Bollinger said of Mr. Kluge: “The idea of financial aid for needy students is just part of his core. He has a deep desire to improve things.”

Mr. Bolinger said half of the $400 million would go to scholarships for undergraduates at Columbia College, and the other half to scholarships and fellowships in other parts of the university.

The announcement comes in the first year after Columbia announced a $4 billion fund-raising campaign emphasizing financial aid and endowed faculty across its schools and campuses.

Nearly every institution of higher learning feels an urgency to raise funds, but the pressure on Columbia is particularly acute since it competes against the wealthiest universities in the country. Last year, its endowment was more than $5 billion, one of the largest in the country but still behind other Ivy League universities.

Until now, the largest gift in the university’s history was slightly more than $200 million, from the Jerome L. Greene Foundation and Mr. Greene’s widow, Dawn M. Greene.

Mr. Kluge was born in Chemnitz, Germany, grew up in Detroit, and won a scholarship that allowed him to attend Columbia, where he graduated in 1937, majoring in economics.

Mr. Kluge made his fortune as a broadcasting entrepreneur, building his multimedia company, Metromedia, into the nation’s largest television business before selling his television stations to Rupert Murdoch in 1986 — stations that became the core of the Fox broadcast network — and then turning his attention, increasingly, to philanthropy.

In 2000 Mr. Kluge gave $73 million to the Library of Congress for a scholarly center and other projects, including the creation of a $1 million John W. Kluge Prize for the study of humanity, intended for areas that the Nobel prizes do not cover, like political science, sociology and philosophy.

In recent years Mr. Kluge sold his 78,000-acre Scottish estate and a London townhouse and a home in Munich, and donated his Virginia farm with 35 outbuildings and thousands of acres to the University of Virginia.

Last year, Mr. Kluge was ranked 25th on the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans, with an estimated fortune of $9.1 billion. Mr. Kluge has three children and has been divorced three times; he is now married to Maria Tussi Kluge.

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, the largest gift to a private university was last year’s $1 billion endowment from the Anil Agarwal Foundation to establish Vedanta University in India.

In the United States, the California Institute of Technology received gifts totaling $600 million in 2001 from Gordon and Betty Moore and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. That same year, Stanford University received a $400 million gift from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. In 1997, the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering received $460 million from the F. W. Olin Foundation.