From this morning's Philadelphia Inquirer page 1 headline:
"$88 million gift for Penn State: Record gift will finance ice arena, support Division I hockey teams"
From the same edition, Local Section, page 1 headline:
"Penn State seeks aid, tuition increases: Students would pay up to 4.9% more in the 2011-12 school year under a plan to be submitted to the state."
Saturday, September 18, 2010
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4 comments:
Interesting GG--but the more I dive into this, the more I come to find the extent to which gifts given to universities come with HUGE strings attached. I imagine the folks at PSU would LOVE to have that $88M for the general fund--but instead, they get an ice rink.
Ghost of Halloween Past once provided some insight into the percentage of Harvard's endowment that was thusly earmarked...it was pretty shocking.
No doubt; I just thought it was interesting that PSU appears newly flush with cash but still coming to the table hat in hand.
What is more interesting here is the story behind the benefactors - Terrence and Kim Pegula. Terrence Pegula was a 1973 graduate of PSU and went on to found East Resources Inc., a petroleum and natural gas development company. ERI was recently purchased by Royal Dutch Shell Group for $4.9 billion. ERI also happens to hold substantial development rights to Marcellus Shale natural gas in PA, WV and NY. There is growing discontent with some folks in PA on the environmental impacts of natural gas and shale oil exploration. "Greasing the skids" so to speak....
Why would they use money for a pretty new ice rink when they can just squeeze the taxpayer teat a little harder?
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