I recently posted about how Purdue University is giving the finger to the Hoosier Tax Payers at the very time when many Hoosiers are facing the prospect of loosing their houses because of rising taxes. Purdue Foundation, under the guise of being Purdue University a Hoosier institution, raised over $1.7 billion from private sources, none of it to help Hoosier tax payers such as myself.
Now it comes to light(according to The Chronicle of Higher Education), that Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis a year ago completed raising over a $1 billion in private funds, this in addition to what was raised by the Purdue Foundation and what is currently being raised by the Indiana University Foundation. Not a single penny of all this money has gone to relieve the burden on Hoosier tax payers.
For example, over $160 million of Purdue's fund raising was dedicated to paying faculty salaries. Now to any normal person that would indicate a lowered need for faculty money for West Lafayette and therefore a lowered State funding. But no!!! In the last legislative term, West Lafayette asked for, and received, substantially more money for the West Lafayette campus.
It is also not like that the "foundations" are spreading the wealth, at least that would justify their actions to the Hoosiers taxpayers from the perspective of the whole State. Almost none of the money is going outside of a small circle of friends around Indianapolis. Purdue University Calumet is getting $5 million (that is with an "m"). Indiana University Northwest and Purdue North Central are getting significantly less, just enough to run the lawn mowers. This by itself could be considered racist and it is.
By the way let us not forget the rest of the State and the Hoosier Tax Payers that are being left in the cold: South Bend, New Albany, Fort Wayne, Richmond, etc. All pay taxes and have campuses and students that deserve a share of the pie without breaking the Hoosier tax payers who are now fighting for their very homes.
This elitist behavior by the State Universities must end and the Governor and State Legislature must retake control over them. Let us not forget that there is no evidence that these large campuses, West Lafayette and Bloomington, have done very much to improve the conditions, economic and social, in the State, As a matter of fact, most evidence is the other way. Most states, e.g. Ohio, Illinois, and Wisconsin, are moving in the other direction, sharing the wealth.
It is now time for action, if not, Indiana will sink to the bottom five states in the United States, even below all the Southern states. All that will be left is to assign someone to turn off the lights on their way out.
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