Responding to Your Recent Questions

In the past few days, I've received some questions regarding state funding of the Carlson School and what that might mean for our future.

For those who might not know, allocation of state funds to the Carlson School has gone down from approximately $13.7 million in FY07 (about 17% of our operating budget then) to an expected $4.0 million in FY12. Included in that $4.0 million is $682,000 of State Special allocations, making unrestricted state funds closer to $3.3 million, or less than 3.6% of this year's budget.

Being a management school, we're particularly conscious of operating lean without sacrificing quality, and have managed to post some of the best Undergraduate four- and five-year graduation rates and admission and placement statistics of any college in the University despite cuts to state funding. Should state funding continue to decrease, we would look at all possible sources to grow our revenues, including executive education and private philanthropy, as we have done over the past few years.

My husband Aks and I have spent almost 20 years at the University of Minnesota and there is no place we'd rather be. As I've written before, we have a gem of a school and we need to work together to ensure its place in our community. Regardless of how the Carlson School is funded in the future, it will remain as committed to the University of Minnesota and to serving the state as it is today.