New York – Billionaire media entrepreneur John Werner Kluge is giving $400 million to Columbia University for financial aid, one of the largest gifts ever to an American university, the university announced Wednesday.
Kluge attended Columbia on scholarship and credits the opportunity with helping him become a successful broadcast entrepreneur.
While most large donations are made toward the construction of a new building or to endow a professorship, Kluge wanted his to go for financial aid to students. It is the largest in Columbia’s history and will come from his estate when he dies.
“John’s extraordinary gift, coupled with his earlier gifts, will help generations of Columbians,” university president Lee C. Bollinger said at a ceremony attended by Kluge, 92, a longtime supporter of the Ivy League institution.
Kluge bought a single radio station in 1946 and built it into Metromedia Broadcasting. In 1983, Kluge took Metromedia private in a leveraged buyout, and he then sold off the broadcast properties piecemeal for $4.65 billion.
He also acquired entertainment properties ranging from the Ice Capades to the Harlem Globetrotters to Playbill magazine.
Forbes magazine ranked him the wealthiest man in America in 1989-91.
