Following up on my previous post, Bucknell Joins Rankings Hall of Shame (Jan. 28, 2013): Inside Higher Ed: $10 Million for Telling the Truth:
Conventional wisdom holds that good news about alma mater inspires donors, and that bad news may scare them away.
Bucknell University is today announcing a gift that defies those beliefs. Two week ago the university announced that it had reported inaccurate data about its SAT and ACT averages, for years, to U.S. News & World Report
and to others (including Bucknell’s own board). While the university
attributed the faulty data to a former employee, John C. Bravman, the
president, issued a letter apologizing for the errors, which he said
“violated the trust” of everyone who used the bad numbers. …Donors who want to remain anonymous and whom he described only as “a
Bucknell couple” said that they wanted — in the wake of the news — to
give $10 million to the university. …Bravman said that they “wanted to stand with the university at this
point in time,” and that they wanted to express support not just with a
call but “in a very concrete way.”
