Why does so little foreign aid go to support universities

Between 2002 and 2013, approximately US\$42.6 billion was given in foreign aid by the world’s richest countries to support higher education in developing countries. That may sound like a lot, but the total amount spent on foreign aid in that period was US\$ 1.6 trillion – dwarfing higher education to just 2.7% of the total. As the graph below shows, the spending in US\$m by the top donor countries has changed very little over ten years. But why have universities had such little support?