Rensselaer Receives $360-Million Pledge
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An anonymous donor has pledged $360 million to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, breaking all previous records in donations to private or public universities, the institute announced.
Rensselaer President Shirley Ann Jackson described the gift as “all cash,” but could not disclose any other details other than that it will be larger than the $350 million pledged last year to MIT or $300 million in stock given to Vanderbilt in 1998.
She said it will have an enormous effect on the 177-year-old private institution, an engineering school with about 7,500 students in Troy, N.Y., near Albany.
“A gift of this magnitude, offered to the university fully unrestricted, is unprecedented,” Jackson said.
Rensselaer plans to double its research activity over the next five years, as well as double the size of its graduate school.
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