Hoosiers for Higher Education
IU Advocacy
Key Messages for Your Elected Officials
We encourage you to share the messages below with your legislators and public officials when you discuss Indiana University. You can support these messages with more IU facts.
State Funding
The Indiana General Assembly will enact a new biennial budget during the 2011 legislative session. Securing state operating appropriations is IU’s top priority for the upcoming legislative session. Indiana University recognizes that operating funding increases may not be possible. However in order to maintain basic operating costs over the next 2 years, IU has submitted a 4.2% budget increase. This percentage is based upon a state designated funding formula that includes IU's enrollment increases, the number of degrees IU issues annually, and the percentage of in-state students attending IU campuses.
We hope that appropriations for the Indiana Innovation Alliance, included in the current biennial budget, will be continued. This initiative involves adding medical students to each of IU’s statewide Centers for Medical Education and expanding program offerings from the first two years of medical school to all four years. In addition, the initiative provides funding for IU and Purdue University to pursue joint research collaborations
It is important to thank legislators for their continuing financial support for IU.
Accessible and affordable
IU is working diligently to make an IU education more accessible and affordable. Our eight campuses are located strategically throughout the state, and each provides a higher education curriculum that is closely aligned with the needs of the community it serves.
IU has dramatically increased need-based student aid through programs like Matching the Promise, the 21st Century Scholarship Covenant and the Pell Promise, and the Hudson and Holland Scholars Program.
Degree attainment
State policymakers have made increasing the production of college degrees a top state priority. President McRobbie, along with each Chancellor, is committed to this goal and has provided substantial resources to the Degrees of Excellence Initiative, which is designed to increase graduation rates on all of our campuses. This initiative supports programs to improve degree or program completion and increase financial aid, with the goal of helping students reach graduation more quickly.
Embracing change and transformation
President McRobbie believes that Indiana University has a duty to ask itself hard questions and to re-think how we achieve core education and research missions. Again, this is a top priority of our policymakers. As a result, he has initiated three major assessment and strategic planning initiatives:
First is the “Blueprint for Student Attainment”, a strategic planning initiative involving each of IU’s regional campuses will be completed by spring, 2011. It is important for state officials to know that IU’s regional campuses make an invaluable contribution to the state—1/3 of IU students attend these campuses and 80% stay in their communities after graduation. IU is pursuing the Blueprint for Student Attainment planning process to ensure that each of IU’s regional campuses pursue a strategy that is in concert with state and regional higher educational goals. A concurrent planning activity is being conducted, which will produce a separate report focusing on affordability and efficiency in all of the above priority areas as well as identification of opportunities for cost efficiencies on the regional campuses.
A second planning initiative is the “New Directions in Teaching and Learning” initiative. Each IU campus is involved in a process of ensuring that IU is teaching in ways and in settings that are most meaningful for the students of today, using to educate more effectively, teaching intentionally by identifying learning goals and outcomes and assuring that they are met, and identifying and transmitting the knowledge and skills that students need for success in life.
Finally, under the “New Academic Directions” initiative, the Bloomington and Indianapolis campuses are engaged in an assessment and planning process that will ensure that each campus continues to be best positioned to retain and elevate their status as world class institutions where 21st century teaching, learning and research take place.
Your Story
Share your personal message about what your IU education, experience, and connection has meant to you. The value of Indiana University is best measured through your voice.
