(04-10-2018 08:05 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(04-09-2018 06:54 PM)Love and Honor Wrote:  You guys should've convinced Gies to cut back his B-school donation to "only" $100 million lol, you'd still have 50 left over to fund hockey. My dad went to U of I and has a good friend who is pretty high up in the fundraising functions, he said at last December's Braggin' Rights game they were expecting a big donation from them but realistically in the 15-20 range.

Ha! I wouldn’t go that far. As a U of I business school grad, that donation from Gies is WAY more important for a much larger number of students compared to hockey. It’s a potential game-changer that can get the B-school into the top academic tier in the way that its engineering school already is today. The State of Illinois funding for public universities is essentially zero at this point, so U of I needs to fundraise as if it were a private university going forward.

Yeah that's definitely true. There's a certain value that having a 'name' business school gives you, like Kelley and Ross in the Big Ten or somewhere else like Wharton. The U of I accounting program is already really good, this ought to really boost the rest of the department which to my knowledge has a solid rep but non-elite status.

It's also a good strategy in terms of recruiting out-of-state or international students and their extra tuition dollars to help make up the budget shortfalls you refer to; liberal arts has a ceiling and can kinda be duplicated at a hundred other colleges, but a phenomenal college of engineering (which they already have) or business is hard to develop but can really attract people from around the country when you can advertise the high starting salary some majors can earn you right after graduation.