A Virginia Tech alumnus and private equity executive is giving $20 million to the public school to fund scholarships and help students gain interdisciplinary skills, such as those needed to address issues surrounding driverless cars.

The donation from David Calhoun, 60, senior managing director for Blackstone Group LP and former chief executive officer of Nielsen Holdings NV, will be announced Tuesday at the school in Blacksburg, known formally as Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

U.S. colleges continue to be major beneficiaries of philanthropy. In the last fiscal year, universities raised a record $43.6 billion, led by Harvard and Stanford. Blackstone’s chairman and co-founder, Stephen Schwarzman, has been a top donor to his alma mater, Yale University, including a gift for $150 million for a student center.

The majority of Calhoun’s gift, $15 million, will endow about 200 scholarships annually at the honors college. The rest will fund two new programs to help students better prepare for jobs, especially developing skills to succeed in complex situations.

“You can’t just be great in one thing,” Calhoun said in an interview. “It’s really the intersection of all these things that matters the most.”