Private fund-raising vital for University of Nebraska

New Delhi, Dec.10 (ANI): As University of Nebraska President Jame. B. Milliken completed his 10-day trip to India exploring options for collaborations with in India, he talked about budget constraints and how the private fund raising helps his University to ensure there remains good enough light at the end of the tunnel for international students.

Speaking about Nebraska University being faced with budget constraints, Milliken said: "I am sure this is the case with institutions around the world, not just Nebraska. I have been pretty consistent in saying that we will continue to pursue our priorities-high quality education, opportunties for our students, opportunities for our institutions, opportunities for our faculties. We will continue to address to our priorities. We may have to reallocate our funds to do it but that's what we will continue to do that."

"We are also, I mentioned this, private fund raising. I am not sure how common this have been in some places right now .............but it is quite common in United States in addition to the State provided funding," he said.

Milliken said: "The State provides little over 25 % of our support so it comes from various other sources and one is private fund raising where we raise philanthropic dollars to support the priorities of the university and that support continues to be very strong despite economic conditions."

Asked how long did he think the support from philanthropists going to last even if not forever, Milliken said: "Well, I cannot speak for them. But so far historically we have seen two years ago we had our best fund raising year ever, last year also been the second best year in history. So we have seen a very strong support from the private sector."

When asked how does he plan to ensure that studying in University of Nebraska proves reasonable to students when it is faced with budget constraints, Milliken said: "Well, there are mechanisms There are several government programmes now to help support that.

This is an area where we have major fund raising campaign going on. It's one of the areas where we are trying to attract additional private funding so that we can accomplish our agenda of bringing more students to the United States to Nebraska and sending more of ours to abroad because of our experience we believe it to be so beneficial to us..........So, we are looking for ways to raise additional private funds for this. We look to the federal govt. for some. And, we have arrangements for now where when we develop the MoU with a particular institution we set the mechanism of what it would cost students from outside Nebraska to come there. And, these are often negotiated." By Sandeep Datta(ANI)