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President Bruininks on:The Future of Higher Education Human Capital and Economic Impact Interdisciplinary Research and Innovation About the Office of the President
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Scholarships Are Critical to the Future of the University and of Minnesota
By Robert H. Bruininks, President of the University of Minnesota We're now well into the new school year at the University of Minnesota, and what was apparent to me last spring, when our incoming students were making their choice of college, is being proved in our classrooms and labs this fall: Academically, we have the best-prepared freshman class in my 36 years at the U of M. That's good news for the U, because few things define a university more than the quality of its students. And it's good news for Minnesota, too, because most of our 11,000 students who graduate annually stay in Minnesota to live and work, and make contributions to the state's economy, culture and quality of life. Unfortunately, while our students are better prepared academically to succeed at the university, cuts by the Legislature and governor have meant severe budget reductions and back-to-back, double-digit tuition increases for students, leaving many of them more financially challenged than ever before. Although a quarter of our undergraduates work more than 20 hours a week, the old paradigm of "working your way through college" doesn't apply anymore. In 1970, a student working at a minimum-wage job could meet the full costs of a public university education by working 24 hours a week. Today, a U of M student would have to work more than 60 hours a week to meet those expenses. That's why I've made scholarships the top fund-raising priority across the University. We've designated October, a month when many alumni reconnect with our campuses, as Scholarship Month to focus important attention on the drive to raise $150 million in private gifts for scholarship support at the U. Currently, we're able to help about 4,500 students with scholarships created through gifts to the university. Our historic goal is to increase that number by 50 percent, to 6,800. We announced recently that the first year of the scholarship drive raised $34 million toward the goal — an impressive start. But there's much more to do, and many more reasons to accomplish it. For one thing, we know that students with scholarships graduate on time at a rate 35 percent higher than other students. Scholarships decrease the amount of time students need to work to pay for their education, making it possible to focus on their studies and take part in the many vital and exciting opportunities available at the U, such as participating in research projects or community service efforts or studying abroad. From the overall university perspective, too many work hours for students could stymie our efforts to keep four-year graduation rates on the upswing. Thankfully, we're succeeding in getting some measure of help to our neediest students. A little more than a third of our undergraduates receive need-based assistance. Aid to those students averages about $4,600. But with total expenses for tuition, books and room and board running more than $17,000 annually, there's no question that many students are stretching financially to pay for their education and that we need to do more to help them. At the same time, the University of Minnesota must build on its reputation as one of the premier public research universities in the nation. I will not, and I know the people of Minnesota won't, accept having the state's only major research university slide into second-rate status. We must keep Minnesota's best and brightest (students applying to the U's Twin Cities campus as their first choice indicate their second choice schools are out of state) and attract top students from elsewhere. These students are heavily recruited by other leading colleges and universities, and our ability to compete for them is increasingly hampered by a shortage of merit scholarships. Today the U ranks at the bottom among its Big 10 peers in the percentage of freshmen receiving merit-based scholarships. We need to move up in order to keep up. Our goal is to raise and match private gifts to change the picture on both need-based and merit scholarships, and with the help of our alumni, faculty and staff, and friends of the University we will do just that. Their generosity is not a substitute for adequate state support (even at our recent, record rates of giving, it would take the university more than 20 years of private fund raising to make up for last year's state cuts), but their gifts are an important part of positioning the university and the state of Minnesota for the future. Bruininks is president of the University of Minnesota. |
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