Less than a year after successfully finishing a $2.38 billion fundraising campaign, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is planning a $4 billion effort to further raise its endowment. It is a breathtaking figure, to be sure, and the timing -- in the midst of a national economic downturn -- is interesting, but not necessarily misplaced.

The university's alumni, after all, are legion. And it's estimated that more than 18,000 prospective donors would be good for gifts in excess of $25,000. Corporate donors also will be targeted. Some will do more, and that's an understatement. UNC-CH anticipates it may receive a $250 million gift and three $100 million gifts from this campaign.

It's perhaps a sad comment, but the time has long since passed when public universities could rely on state funding for the entirety of their support that's not derived from tuition and fees. Campuses have boomed in size and scope. Funds from donors are virtually a necessity, and a smart university presents to alumni the chance to help an institution that gave them the education they needed to succeed, prosper and contribute something worthwhile to society.

UNC-Chapel Hill has a new chancellor, Holden Thorp, who is himself a product of the campus. To this fundraising campaign he can bring a home-state perspective, mindful of the extraordinary value his university provides to students and the public.

One reminder to state lawmakers, however. The other 15 campuses of the University of North Carolina system do not share the large and sometimes affluent alumni base that the Chapel Hill campus has, and are more dependent upon public funding. Legislators must continue to make higher education a priority for those institutions (and Chapel Hill as well) as more North Carolina young people seek to attend college.

Other campuses might use the ambitious goal in Chapel Hill to remind their own alumni of the need for support Any gift counts -- assuming that there are not too many people with an extra $250 million lying around.

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