September 27, 2007 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Robert Day, a California financier and president of the W.M. Keck Foundation, in Los Angeles, is giving $200-million to his alma mater, Claremont McKenna College. The liberal arts college, in Claremont, Calif., will use the money to pay for a new master’s degree program that will focus on economics and finance, for enhanced undergraduate programs in those fields, and for scholarships.
The money is a personal donation from Mr. Day, not a grant from the foundation he leads.
Under the Robert Day Scholars Program, undergraduates will be able to pursue a bachelor’s degree in accounting, finance, or leadership psychology, or a Master of Finance degree, or both. The first 20 undergraduate Day Scholars will matriculate next fall, and the graduate program will begin in 2009, according to the college’s president, Pamela Gann.
The combined undergraduate and graduate structure is meant as an alternative to a traditional MBA program. The usual path of people working for several years before going back to school to earn an MBA is changing, says Ms. Gann. Fewer people these days chose to go back to school after entering the workforce because their salaries are increasing at a rapid pace, and because many of them don’t want to disrupt their finances or their personal lives, Ms. Gann says.
She says Mr. Day’s gift responds to that trend by providing liberal arts undergraduates with a broader understanding of finance and organizational psychology, and giving them the opportunity to get MBA-level training in a master’s program.
Mr. Day said he thinks a liberal arts education is crucial to the making of a competent leader. “It broadens your perspective,” he says. But those same leaders, he says, also need a certain level of competency in finance, accounting literacy, and leadership psychology, and he has worked closely with the college to design a program that will include that.
“This is not to turn the college into a trade school; it’s to emphasize leadership,” Mr. Day says, adding that today’s students are getting a strong enough education that they don’t necessarily need an MBA to succeed.
Mr. Day graduated from the college in 1965 and has served on its Board of Trustees since 1970. He is also a member of the college’s Executive Committee.
The college plans to use some of this new infusion of money to hire six to eight new faculty members, for student scholarships, and to improve the college’s career services and internship programs.
