OUR VIEW: To USU’s many donors, thank you

Most of us attend college without fully understanding who pays for our educations. It’s a trickier question than it appears – tuition and fees are what we see directly, but they pay for less than a fifth of our education costs. but behind the scenes, government subsidies, grants and private donations pay for a lot of what we see at USU.
   
On Friday, the university held a celebration marking the end of its first comprehensive fundraising campaign. It may not sound important, it may be easy to skip in a calendar of events, but the university raised more than half a billion dollars. The money will pay for new scholarships, new buildings and new programs at our university.
   
We’re lucky to have Stan Albrecht, a president who understands the importance of private donors in a rough economy. We’re lucky he had the foresight to set high goals and hire the people who could make them happen. Most of all, we’re lucky there are tens of thousands of people willing to donate so we can have better lives.
   
We complain about tuition sometimes, but compared to what some students pay at other universities, we’re stealing an education at USU.
   
To all the people who donate to our university – thank you.