Ceci Evangelista, special assistant to the vice president for development at Stanford, attributes the university's drop to a different technique of reporting gifts. Stanford does not keep records on the face value of its donations, but rather their future worth--in current market value, she said. The survey, however, calculated donations based on current face value.

"We don't even have that on our books," she said.

Evangelista also noted that a number of high-performing universities are involved in capital campaigns. According to the Chronicle, 12 of the top 20 universities were in capital campaigns when the data was collected.

The University of Nebraska was a newcomer to the top 10, boosted into the ninth spot by a capital campaign and a $130 million gift, according to the Chronicle.

Harvard did not always come out the winner in breakdowns of donation sources. Although during 1997-98, Harvard got the most money from alumni, during 1998-99 Cornell was number one.

"Eighty percent of our gifts come from alumni," Tiedemann said. "We've seen nothing but increases across the board. Our hope is that we can continue to rely on alumni."

Harvard also fell from first to fourth in terms of giving from non-alumni individuals. Polytechnic, Stanford and Cornell came in first, second and third.