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As citizens with a commitment to our state, we know that higher education is a key component of Indiana’s economic vitality and quality of life. Better-educated citizens attract better-paying industries to the state and enable Indiana to compete in an increasingly global economy. Hoosiers with bachelor’s degrees earn, on average, $1 million more during their working lifetimes than those with high school diplomas. Our universities are drivers of economic recovery.
As important are other ways in which we benefit from our great state universities. They produce our doctors and other health professionals, attorneys, teachers, businessmen and women, entrepreneurs, social workers and the many others on whom we depend for the strength and richness of life in our communities.
The research conducted and the services offered by universities underpin advances in health care and science, achievement in the arts and the quality of our everyday lives at work and at home.
Troubled economic times make us take a close look at what matters to us. Such times make us ask what we value and what will provide the greatest benefit to us and to our fellow citizens over the long term. My answer is higher education.
I am particularly proud of all that my alma mater, Indiana University, is doing to enhance the great contributions that higher education can make to our state.
In fact, IU’s president, Michael McRobbie, took the unusual and bold step in recent months of announcing an increase in the goal of the Matching the Promise fundraising campaign currently under way for the Bloomington campus.
The campus was well on its way to achieving its $1 billion goal when President McRobbie asked that the goal be raised by $100 million.
As the president said then, IU must redouble its efforts – not in spite of, but because of – the current economic turmoil. IU must redouble its efforts because it has a duty and a desire to serve the state, to be a catalyst and to be a partner in realizing the greatest potential of this state and of its individual citizens.
The Matching the Promise campaign has many worthy purposes, including attracting and retaining the finest faculty and researchers, providing state-of-the-art learning and research facilities and enabling qualified students to realize their dreams of a college education.
Student support is, perhaps, the most remarkable part of the Matching the Promise story. As a result of the generosity of 50,000 donors, more than $220 million has been contributed for undergraduate student scholarships to date.
These scholarship gifts, and IU’s commitment to increasing financial aid from every possible source, have resulted in a significant drop in the cost of an IU Bloomington education for Indiana’s low- and moderate-income families and a projected decrease in actual out-of-pocket tuition and fee payments over the next few years.
I wish for similar successes at all of Indiana’s colleges and universities because higher education – a quality education accessible to all qualified students – matters. I take great pride in IU’s leadership among higher education institutions and in its determination to do all it can for our state. There can be no better investment in our future.
