Well endowed: colleges and universities thrive on corporate and individual goodwill.

• Author: Dunlop, Phil

Indiana and Purdue universities may be known as "state" colleges, but if you think they get most of their money from the government, think again. Key sources of revenue for IU, Purdue and other Indiana institutions of higher learning - public and private alike - are their respective endowments.

Endowments make up the necessary extra funding that any college or university must have to bring enrichment to the educational experience for all its students. They yield visiting-professor programs, scholarships and endowed chairs, and enable schools to keep learning tools and equipment up-to-date. In fact, without endowments, a large percentage of scholarships would evaporate.

At IU - based in Bloomington with a total of eight campuses - less than 25 percent of the total operating budget comes from the state. Private sources of endowed funds provide the margins that keep IU ranked among the nation's top universities. Contributions support teaching, research, scholarships and fellowships, special equipment, guest lecturers and speakers, conferences and acquisitions for the libraries and museums.

Endowments at IU are handled by the Indiana University Foundation, the school's fund-raising arm. In fiscal year 1993-94, the foundation received $43.9 million in private contributions. "The total value of our endowment portfolio is about $393 million," reports the foundation's Barbara Coffman.

INDIANA'S LARGEST COLLEGE ENDOWMENTS

College City Enrollment Endowment

University of Notre Dame Notre Dame 10,350 $930 mil. Indiana University Bloomington 92,769 $393 mil. Purdue University West Lafayette 60,348 $233 mil. Earlham College Richmond 995 $156 mil. Wabash College Crawfordsville 800 $155 mil. DePauw University Greencastle 2,050 $152 mil. Butler University Indianapolis 3,758 $106 mil. Rose-Hulman Terre Haute 1,342 $86 mil. Hanover College Hanover 1,043 $78 mil. Valparaiso University Valparaiso 3,500 $63 mil.

Source: Individual institutions. For universities with multiple campuses, total enrollment is listed. At Purdue University in West Lafayette, the endowment and similar funds had a market value of $232.5 million as of last June 30, the end of the university's fiscal year.

As important as endowments are to the operation of state universities, they are even more critical at independent institutions. Student tuition and fees tend to be higher there, often significantly higher, yet endowments in many cases allow them to compete on a fairly equal level with...