France Cordova, president of Purdue University, answered students' questions about school budgets on Wednesday evening, March 3, in Krannert Auditorium.
Hosted by Purdue Student Government, the student budget forum aimed to give students opportunities to ask school officials about where their money goes to and how their tuition is used.
Together with President Cordova, Al Diaz, the executive vise president for business and finance, gave a presentation on where Purdue gets its funding from and their goals for future funding.
According to Diaz, Purdue endowment is about 200 million dollars per year, but the number is expected to go up to 400 million dollars by the next decade.
"We don't need that many buildings, but we want to make more scholarships available to students, " Cordova said.
In the question session, Qi Luo, a graduate student and president of Chinese Student and Scholar's Association, raised concerns that international students don't have equal opportunities as domestic students in terms of receiving scholarships.
In response to Luo's concern, Cordova explained the restrictions came from local government, but she's seeking opportunities for international students from oversea sources.
"I go to China twice a year for fundraising purposes," said Cordova. "In addition to China, I go to other Asian countries as well."
On behalf of students who couldn't attend the forum, Brad Krites, PSG president, asked about the outcomes of not raising tuition even when state funding is decreasing. Cordova explained the first impact will be the shrinking number of faculty.
"We usually had 130 professors, but the number dropped to 49 due to insufficient funds," said Cordova. "If we can't get good professors to teach in Purdue, our ranking will do down eventually."
The forum was originally expected to be an hour long, but students asked questions for almost 50 minutes. All the school officials, including President Cordova, stayed till the end.
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