2011, Bates made national headlines for being named the most expensive college in the U.S., which caused backlash from American academia and students as it indirectly highlighted substantial socioeconomic inequality among students. After a year-long search for the next president, Harvard University dean, Clayton Spencer, was appointed as Hansen's successor. Spencer assumed the presidency in 2012, and created diversity mandates, expanded student and faculty recruitment, and financial aid allocation. While some reforms were successful, minorities at the college, typically classified as non-white and low income students, still reported lack of safe spaces, insensitive professors, financial insecurity, indirect racism and social elitism. According to a 2017 article on income inequality by The New York Times, 18% of Bates students came from the 1% of the American upper class (families who made about $525,000 or more per year), with more than half coming from the top 5% (families who made about $110,000 or more per year). According to the Portland Press Herald, Michael Bonney '80 and his wife donated $50 million to the college in support of the $300 million "Bates+You" fundraising campaign launched in May 2017. The campaign is the largest ever undertaken by the college totaling $300 million, with $168 million already raised . In the aftermath of the 2019 college admissions bribery scandal, Ron Lieber of The New York Times noted that need-aware colleges like Bates and others prioritized students who could pay full tuition in the admission process, writing that, "you can get help if you're admitted, but you might not be admitted if you need help." Though it has a large endowment, Bates has continued to struggle to set a fee schedule that students can afford. Academics Bates College is a private baccalaureate liberal arts college that offers 36 departmental and interdisciplinary program majors and 25 secondary concentrations, and confers Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) and Bachelor of Science (B.S.) degrees. Bates College enrolls 1,792 students, 200 of whom study abroad each semester. The academic year is broken up into three terms, primary, secondary, and short term, also known as the 4–4–1 academic calendar. This includes two semesters, plus a Short Term consisting of five weeks in the Spring, in which only one class is taken and in-depth coursework is commonplace. Two Short Terms are required for graduation, with a maximum of three. The largest natural science academic department at Bates College is the biology department, followed by