Hoosiers for Higher Education

IU Advocacy

IU Facts

The facts below are a reminder of Indiana University’s importance, from the high quality of an IU education to the ways IU research is driving economic development. You can use these points of pride to bolster the key messages you share with your elected officials.

Alumni

IU has more than 530,500 living graduates and more than 1.2 million alumni (who completed at least one IU class) worldwide, making our alumni body the third largest of any university in the United States. More than 267,000 IU graduates live in Indiana. Outside the United States, more than 9,400 IU graduates live in 157 countries.

Academic Excellence

Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom is the 8th Nobel prize winner from IU. Prof. Ostrom is the Arthur F. Bentley Professor of Political Science in the College of Arts & Sciences at IU Bloomington. She is the first woman to receive the Nobel for Economics since its inception more than 40 years ago.

IU scholars include 8 Nobel Laureates, 7 Pulitzer Prize winners, 5 MacArthur Fellows and currently includes more than 30 active and emeritus members of the National Academies and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. IU also has 127 winners of the Guggenheim Fellowship, dating back to 1939.

Eight IU graduate schools and programs were recently ranked among the nation's Top 25 by U.S. News and World Report magazine in its latest annual report, "America's Best Graduate Schools."

• The IU School of Library and Information Science received the highest ranking for IU, finishing 7th in its category. The magazine also gave top 10 rankings to three of the school's specialty programs: Digital librarianship (7th), information systems (8th) and school library media (10th).
• The IU Maurer School of Law improved 13 places to 23rd, the first time it has moved into a top 25 ranking. The School tied for 7th among the most public institutions.
• The IU School of Law-Indianapolis received two top 10 citations for programs ranked by faculty who teach in the fields of health law and legal writing.
• Several departments in the College of Arts and Sciences received top 25 rankings. The Department of Sociology was ranked 11th overall, social psychology specialty was ranked 2nd, the English and history departments were ranked 22nd overall and psychology is 23rd. The gender and literature specialty in the English Department was ranked 5th, and its18th-20th century British literature program ranked 10th. IU's African history specialty was ranked 7th.
• The IU School of Education remains in the top 20, ranking 19th. It also had four specialty programs in the top 10--counseling and personnel services (6th), secondary education (8th), higher education administration and elementary education (both 9th).
• Kelley School of Business was ranked 22nd overall and had two disciplines ranked in the top 10--entrepreneurship is 8th and accounting is 10th.
• The School of Medicine at IUPUI improved its ranking in two different areas. It was moved up from 26th to 21st in primary care and moved up one position to 45th in research.

IU Bloomington and IUPUI were acknowledged as offering some of the best experiences for undergraduate students in the 2009 college edition of U.S. News & World Report. U.S. News ranked IU Bloomington 29th among public national research universities. Both IU Bloomington and IUPUI were cited for offering “academic programs that are commonly linked to student success.”

• The undergraduate program at the Kelley School of Business was ranked 12th overall and sixth among public universities, with the entrepreneurship program ranking first among public schools and fourth overall.
• IUPUI was listed among 77 national colleges and universities “to keep an eye on” because they have “recently made the most promising and innovative changes in academics, faculty, students, campus, or facilities.”
• IUPUI was ranked seventh in a separate listing of national universities "to watch," up from 14th a year ago.
• Both IU Bloomington and IUPUI were recognized for their success in promoting learning communities that build connections among fellow students and between students and professors.

In the just-released 2009 World Rankings for Entrepreneurship Productivity, Kelley's Department of Management and Entrepreneurship received the No. 1 ranking among 150 schools worldwide in the study.

IU students have consistently won more Fulbright fellowships than their Big Ten peers. Thirty-three Indiana University students were awarded 2008-09 Fulbright grants—a 65 percent increase over last year.

IU Bloomington ranks in the top 20 universities nationally both for numbers of international students studying at IUB and for IU students studying abroad, according to a report from the Institute of International Education.

IU School of Medicine students consistently score above the national average on the national medical licensing exam.

The IU faculty includes 123 Guggenheim Fellows, more than any other institution in Indiana. Since 1998, at least one IU faculty member has won a fellowship each year. IU also has 42 American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellows. Only 10 other institutions have more AAAS Fellows than IU.

Economic Development

The IU Research and Technology Corporation (IURTC), IU’s agent for economic development, received 144 invention disclosures, executed 35 licenses, and helped form two new businesses in fiscal year 2008. IU faculty and staff filed a record 167 patent applications.

The Indiana Innovation Alliance unites IU and Purdue with other universities, businesses, economic development groups, health care enterprises (including nonprofits), and the state government in an effort to attract and retain bright, entrepreneurial people whose scientific research will lead to more and better jobs and new innovations that bolster Indiana’s economy. The Alliance will also expand medical education and health care innovations that will have a significant impact on the future delivery of health care to Hoosiers.

Since 1999, licensing revenues from IU School of Medicine discoveries have grown from $1.3 million to more than $5 million per year.

Research

Grants and awards to IU for research and other sponsored programs increased 21 percent in fiscal year 2008 to a record total of $525.3 million. Of that, a record $263.4 million came from federal sources such as the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation—a 25 percent increase over the previous year.

IU School of Medicine faculty have boosted the school’s total research grants and contracts to a record $220 million, including $109 million from the National Institutes of Health.

IU’s “Big Red” is one of the fastest supercomputers owned and operated by a U.S. university, bolstering IU’s research capabilities in the life sciences, weather forecasting, and physics.

Fundraising

IU received a record $408.6 million in private sector support in fiscal year 2008. This exceeds the previous record, set in 2005, by $107.6 million. The total voluntary support for IU includes $251.4 million in gifts made to the IU Foundation, $36.3 million in gifts to the Riley Children’s Foundation, and an additional $120.9 million from non-governmental contracts and research grant awards.

As a result of the loyalty of IU’s donors, at last count the university ranked first in the Big Ten in the number of endowed chairs, totaling 408. Endowed chairs are essential to the recruitment and retention of top-flight faculty.

During the past decade, only three other public universities have received more total voluntary support than IU: Berkley, the University of Wisconsin, and UCLA.

IU ranks 12th among public universities in the nation in the market value of its endowment, which totaled $1.55 billion as of June 30, 2008.

To date, the Matching the Promise Campaign for Bloomington has raised more than $300 million for student scholarships and fellowships. The goal of this campaign has been increased to $1.1 billion, from the original goal of $1 billion.