[Easyrider]

Originally Posted by buggyone

...and what is the problem with this? Notre Dame is a private university. The students will not be receiving federal student aid. Catholics are usually a very liberal group of people.

Children brought to the US when very small and have graduated high school in the US are more American than they are of the foreign country their parent are from. They serve in our armed forces voluntarily. They speak English. Their only "crime" is that their parents brought them to the US without going through proper channels. The children had nothing to do with that.

It is incorrect that Notre Dame does not receive federal money. This action also sends the message to reward the illegal deeds of the parents bringing children over the border illegally and ignores the needs of those children legally born here even including those actually born here to undocumented/illegal parents. This would mean they were already born when they were brought over into this country.

If there are no children which are legal citizens remaining, even those born here to illegal parents, that have applied to Notre Dame then maybe it would be appropriate to consider illegal immigrants. The term illegal also covers a bit more than just what you described.

Each year, Notre Dame has an entering class of about 2000 college/university students. For those 2000 seats in its first-year college/university class, Notre Dame receives over 29,000 applications. About 2,100 (8%) of the 29,000 applicants will be admitted, since some people will be accepted at many college/university and will turn down Notre Dame's offer of admission.


What would we say to the already nearly 27,000 legal citizen applicants that were not accepted each year?

No doubt many hundreds rejected were 4.0 students or better with stellar achievements too...



Notre Dame receives over $34 million in stimulus funds
As part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), the University of Notre Dame received $34.7 million to support 29 different research initiatives. Notre Dame is the single largest recipient of stimulus dollars in St. Joseph County, where funds dispersed totaled just over $150 million.

The majority of the $787 billion distributed as part of the ARRA were intended to create jobs and promote investment and consumer spending. However, the portion Notre Dame received was part of $21.5 billion doled out by Congress for research and development spending.

According to Robert J. Bernhard, the university’s vice president of research, stimulus funding has been used in a variety of ways to support research at Notre Dame. “Some of the funds were used to purchase laboratory equipment and some to employ researches, including undergraduate students, graduate students, post doctoral fellows, and research staff,” he stated.

The specific research initiatives the stimulus dollars support vary greatly, not only in terms of the subject matter they focus on, but also in the level of funding they have been allotted. For instance, a nanotechnology research consortium led by Notre Dame received $10 million dollars, while $34,800 was given to study blood coagulation proteins.

The application process for federal funding was competitive, as receipt of ARRA money was not necessarily guaranteed.

“Researchers submitted proposals to various federal agencies, which were then evaluated in a rigorous and independent competitive process to determine the worthiness of the proposals and the funding levels relative to the many other proposals they received from other universities,” said Bernhard. “These have nothing to do with funds that are attached to legislation – sometimes known as earmarks.”

Notre Dame was not the only university in the state of Indiana to benefit from the stimulus package. By comparison, Purdue University was awarded $130.3 million for 198 proposals while Indiana University has received $62.7 million to support 180 proposals, with $16.7 million still expected.

Although job creation is not the primary purpose of the funds which Notre Dame has received thus far, Bernhard said that new employees have been hired by the university as a result of ARRA funding.

“[The stimulus money is] used to fund research, including people and equipment, and to build research infrastructure,” he stated. “Jobs have been created. It’s expected that the infrastructure upgrades will lead to more research, including jobs, and that some of the research will lead to commercial application and more jobs in the future.”

“In our last quarterly report, there had been 90 jobs created,” Bernhard pointed out. “There will be more jobs in the next quarterly report.”

While Bernhard is excited about the research opportunities ARRA support has created at Notre Dame, he said that he is also mindful that stimulus funding is taxpayer money intended to reinvigorate the nation’s fledgling economy.

“We are very aware that ARRA funding is intended to create jobs and build infrastructure,” he said. “We are working diligently to be good stewards of these funds.”

Jonathan Liedl is a matchmaker par excellence. Contact him at jliedl@nd.edu.

Post Published: 03 October 2010



From the American Prospect:

These schools cannot hide behind the façade that they are "private" institutions and can discriminate however they please. They purport to be open to all on an equal opportunity basis, and each of them annually receives tens of millions of dollars in federal funds. In 2008, Notre Dame received $60 million in federal research funds; $20 million more in government grants for tuition; and $265 million in charitable donations for which we taxpayers picked up the tab of about $80 million, by way of tax deductions to the donors.

These universities are subject to the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race or ancestry in the admissions decisions of private schools. The 1866 Act -- the first civil-rights statute in the nation's history -- overturned the infamous Dred Scott decision, which had held that U.S. citizenship was inherited from a person's ancestors. The act mandated instead that all persons born in the United States -- "the children of all parentage whatever" -- are U.S. citizens and have an equal right to enter into contracts, including contracts to attend a school, without discrimination based on ancestry or race.