LEWISTON – Bates College has launched the public phase of a $120 million fund-raiser to boost financial aid and improve academic programs and campus facilities.

The campaign is by far the largest in the school’s history.

It focuses on increasing the endowment for financial aid, academic programs and high faculty salaries to keep the college competitive with peers. It also seeks to increase annual giving for the college’s operating budget and to boost funding to support improved campus facilities.

The campaign, which will end in 2006, already has raised more than $73 million from the college’s board of trustees, senior administrators and a select group of alumni, parents and friends. The college has received 15 gifts or pledges of $1 million or more.

At a ceremony to launch the campaign on Saturday, college President Elaine Tuttle Hansen said there is a growing gap “between the super-rich colleges and the more moderately endowed, like Bates.”

“Bates came later than most of the other colleges that we compete with to the realization that frugality was not enough, that fund raising was critical; along with our New England values went pride in our independence, self-reliance and polite reluctance to talk about money,” she said.

Bates has had three previous fund-raising campaigns. It raised $59.3 million in a campaign that ended in 1996, $21 million in an effort that ended in 1984, and $6.8 million in a campaign that ended in 1974.