TerryElkes Principal and Co-Owner, Apollo Partners LLC
I'm a believer that public universities, by virtue of their being "public," have a broader and greater social responsibility to the nation than private universities do.The challenge these institutions face today is to be able to convince their alumni that, with local governments no longer able to fully fund public higher education, there need to be private contributions. These are critical for institutions like City College, if they are going to remain great and grow, and attract the capital that they need. It's really a pleasure and a duty to give back a little bit. For me, what City College really represented was the only opportunity where someone with my background could obtain a first-class education. It was a system that was based strictly on merit and tuition-free, and it was the gateway towards a career which I would not have been able to achieve otherwise. Today's students deserve nothing less than that opportunity as well.
