University officials gathered officers from student organizations together Tuesday night for the What Every Student Leader Needs to Know About Grand Valley reception. A panel of speakers addressed student questions about state appropriations, fundraising and the university’s financial future.
The panel included Jim Bachmeier, vice president for finance and administration; Maribeth Wardrop, vice president for university development; and Matt McLogan, vice president for university relations.
As state appropriations have been cut back, the university had made up for the difference with private donations. In the past 15 years, Wardrop’s office has raised $200 million through private donations.
“All of the money that Maribeth has raised has either gone into facilities or student scholarship programs or financial aid,” McLogan said. “We do not use private money to pay the light bill, or pay anybody’s salaries.”
GVSU receives $58.3 million in state appropriations, or about $2,365 per student, the lowest of Michigan’s 15 public universities. State appropriations make up 17.2 percent of the univerity’s $309.7 million budget.
The state budget has been cut $4 billion since 2000, with the single largest cut going to higher education appropriations.
“State funding at Grand Valley is low,” Bachmeier said. “It’s very low, perhaps the lowest it’s been since it’s inception. We’re in the bottom five percent in the country, and I’d even venture to say we’re in the bottom two percent.”
The university hopes to transition the donor base from community members to GVSU alumni, Wardrop said. Currently, 6.3 percent of alumni give back to the university, a “pretty embarassing” statistic Wardrop attributes both to the youth of the university — the majority of GVSU alumni graduated in the 1990s — and the youth of the University Development office, which was created 15 years ago.
Read the full story at http://www.lanthorn.com/.
No comments:
Post a Comment