Icould tell Jonathan Alter '79 had gone to Harvard. Who else but an alum of a school with an $11 billion endowment would call on the super-rich to steer their money away from higher education?

Who else but a graduate of a University that, at a cost of $25 million, would gut its historic Freshman Union and rename it after a pair of donors, would declare: "New buildings are pleasant for the privileged students lucky enough to use them, and those big plaques are a nice ego reward for the benefactors. But are they really what society as a whole needs most right now?"

Of course not.

In his column in the Sept. 29 issue of Newsweek, Alter, once a Crimson executive, rightfully takes on the super-rich patrons of higher education-the Barkers, Annenbergs, Lokers, Belfers and Gateses of the world-for tossing dollars at the Ivy League.

Donors, Alter explains, have clear reasons for giving to colleges: they don't have to worry about how the money will be spent; they are contributing to a good cause; they are motivated by sentiment, and, of course, they are getting, at the very least, a nice plaque in return.

Alter offers a statistical perspective on this distribution of philanthropic wealth. Of the nearly $150 billion in total annual charitable contributions, nearly half goes to religious organizations, and 10 percent goes to higher education. Less than 10 percent goes to programs aimed at helping the poor.

In other words, there's a whole lot of giving going on, but too much of it stays within the circles of the well-off.

Let's take a more personal perspective on the problem. Last week, midway through my first section in the Barker Center, I started to think about Alter's column. Did we need this fancy new classroom, with its heavy wooden desks and high-tech security system? What had been so lacking in the seminar rooms in Sever, Emerson, Coolidge, Lowell and Memorial halls, or Lamont Library?

There are certainly several justifications for the Barker Center, such as the legitimate desire to centralize the humanities departments and the reasonable interest in preventing the aging Union from decaying into uselessness.

But couldn't Harvard at least refrain from self-congratulation long enough to question whether this was $25 million well-spent? After all, it's not as if the Barker Center is the last of the renovations.

The current money-grubbing Administration, led by Chief Fund-Raiser Neil L. Rudenstine, has announced plans to use some of the money raised by the ongoing $2 billion capital campaign to build a $25 million international studies center on Cambridge Street. Across the River, construction is underway on a massive new gymnasium for athletes.

Boylston Hall is the next academic building in line for an overhaul. Harvard Dining Services is in the midst of a long-term project to renovate the house dining halls. And there has even been talk of building a new undergraduate house.

Will the construction and renovation ever end? Not until donors stop giving in to the University's sales pitch and realize that their millions could be better spent preserving the rain forests, funding salaries of inner-city teachers or alleviating food and housing shortages here in America and world-wide.

Is this a naive hope? Unrealistic? Old-fashioned? Not at all. Not when Ted Turner has joined the bandwagon, pledging $1 billion to benefit United Nation's agencies in one of the largest charitable donations ever, and exhorting his super-rich colleagues to follow his lead.

Turner started his call to checkbooks in August 1996, when, incensed by a New York Times report that the very wealthy give away a smaller proportion of their wealth than other economic groups, he told Times columnist Maureen Dowd that the Forbes 400 list of millionaires "is destroying our country."