[CND, 11/20/95] New Jersey -- Princeton University alumnus, Hong Kong
businessman Gordon Wu (Yingxiang Hu - pinyin), 58, promised a $100 million
donation to his alma mater, the New Jersey Chinese American entrepreneur
sponsored and freely distributed Jersey Weekly reported on November 17.
Not only will the donation be the largest in the Princeton history, it will
be the sixth largest among all the donations made to campuses over the US,
not to mention that it will be the largest ever donated to any US schools by
a foreigner. The donation is designated to be given to the engineering
and applied science college of Princeton.
On November 9, Hu held a press conference at Princeton, he said that he was
a C+ student who finished a degree in civil engineering at Princeton. Up
his graduation in 1958 Hu learned that the $850 tuition paid by each of the
13 (he was among them) engineering students each year was only enough to pay
the partial salaries of the then 15 faculties. Much of the school
expenditure was drawn from donations of its alumni. Hu set up a resolution
to himself to follow the examples of his predecessors, which is finally to
be materialized today.
Hu believes in the value of education. The best legacy for the younger
generation is giving them education, he used to tell his son. He holds
such a point of view that if parents put effort in educating their children
the kids in fact do not need the monetary legacy. Without education,
monetary legacy will do no good at all for the children.
Based on such broad-mindedness, Hu, who owns personal properties worth
$1 billion and has two companies valued at $3.5 billion with an annual
income of $3 billion, has donated $12 million to Princeton in the past few
years. He pledged to continue supporting his alma meter financially as
long as he is alive.
The head of the Princeton engineering and applied science college,
Qianguang Wei (pinyin), said that $30 million of Hu's donation will be
used in laboratory renovation, and the rest will go into interest-generating
funds of which the interests will become salaries of faculties and fees for
opening new courses. Among the $100 million donation $65 million will be
paid in cash between now and the year 2,000, and the rest $35 million will
be given in non-cash donation form.
Hu claimed that he did it to help the US maintain its competitiveness in
the world, in engineering and applied science in particular. Two of Hu's
four children also graduated from Princeton. (Frank LING)
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