Oil collapse gives US colleges a test on backpedaling donors
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — It’s easy to see what oil money means to the University of Texas. Tuition hasn’t budged in three years because of gushing wells in the Permian Basin. More than a few buildings, including the football team headquarters, are named after wildcatters, and a pump jack stands outside the 100,000-seat stadium to commemorate the 1920s oil boom.
But the latest bust and tumbling crude prices are now pinching off the largesse that helps this university and others in oil-rich states afford what they want when state budgets are straitened, which is especially the case now. Already, the consequences are becoming obvious.
Campus construction projects are being stretched out or put in limbo, scholarship funds are taking a hit and across the Southwest, donors are asking for more time to make good on big pledges.
“When the price of oil was $100 a barrel we had a lot more gifts. They had the ability to make more gifts,” said Bob Walker, who raised hundreds of millions of dollars for Texas A&M University for three decades before retiring last year.
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