Bit of the institution to be able to maintain the excellence and teaching capability of our institutions. So, i main focus now is making sure that we raise funds for scholarship, for grants, and making sure that we bring your kids and my kids also to a Great Institution that prepares them for a lifelong learning, lifelong job and lifelong citizenship in a great country. Provost, here is a tweet from one of our viewers, lauren, who says Virtual Schools will be one tenth the cost. Well, Virtual Schools are great for people who are very interested in that. But i believe sincerely in the residential experience for students. Its not i mean, its not only bringing the students here to study, but bringing students here to socialize, to create networks, to make friends, to meet people from all over the world. If you stay in your bedroom, thats very difficult, very, very difficult to produce what i call a whole citizen. We believe we produce Online Education for people who are desirable of that and we also use those to teach our students on campus so that they can have education any time they want in the day. But, eventually my belief and the belief here is that residential education is extremely important not for only the educational aspects but for the social development of young people to be able to partake of a democratic society. And here is another topic for you, that is the issue of free speech on College Campuses and civil discourse. Here is a headline from the guardian a professor at the university of illinois was fired for israeli criticism and urges the university of illinois to reinstate this professor. What is the university of illinoiss policy civil discourse and free speech . Look, civil discourse and free speech are the lynch pin in this countrys armor, in times of democracy. I think the professor in question was not fired, he was just not hired. And in our classrooms on campus, we go to the campus, you can talk to the students, theres no restriction whatsoever on free speech or Academic Freedom on our campus. And we are the chancellor and myself, we are talking to faculty on campus, really debating, trying to get everybody to really start discussing, debating free speech and Academic Freedom in this new age. And weve been visiting colleges, weve talked to professors who thinks free speech is done, its written in the first article and is done. But we talk to law professors who teach free speech for a whole semester and thinks maybe there may be limits, but these are subjects for discussion. And every new generation have to discus so that they can imbibe the lessons of what people fought for for a long time in this country. So free speech and Academic Freedom are alive and well on our campus and this is something that were committed to, no police thoughts yet, no trying to limit any speech. Our professors can challenge any establishments in the classroom because we have to train our students. We just have to train the students so that when they get out of here being respectful of other people, being just engaging, we have a tremendous number of out of states students, foreign students, how do you become a Global Citizen . Free speech and Academic Freedom is a part they are a part of this education. What about out of the classroom . Are you monitoring your students and your facultys twitter page, facebook, other social media . Not at all. If we are doing that, it means that we have nothing to do on this campus. We dont monitor anything that our faculty are doing outside of the classroom. Faculty, students, staff, they can do anything they want to do. They can say anything they want to say. Thats its a great place to come, its a destination for people who want to come here to come partake in the Largest Library collection in the world on any campus. So these are things that we take as a given on our campus. Academic freedom, free speech are a core value, a core value of this institution as well as of course as of the country. Then why was this professor not hired . Well, i think the board of trustees and the chancellors have made their decision. I do not want to second guess, but i think we try to move on from that. Encouraging our faculty and students to really come together and initiate discussion. There are Many University of california in burkely, yale university, these are hot topics right now being discussed and we want to be in the middle of that. In the decisions of ak semiic freedom and free speech. I will say that the board of trustees and the chancellor made the decision to not hire the person in question, but now it is for us to really talk amongst ourselves and nationally this particular issue. Okay. Well go to lavella in illinois. Go ahead. Caller hi. My name is lavella and im really happy to be able to get you guys. Ive been trying since 2006 or 7. And my question is pertaining to children of military families, active duty and retired. Can you hear me . We can, lavella. So what is your question . Caller okay. My sque, my daughter is active duty military and she has a stepson and also has two younger children. So, does she qualify for any kind of assistance for her stepson . This is their home state of residence because she plans to use her other benefits for her two younger children. Can she use the benefits for all three . Well, i dont know the exact what is it called i do not know the exact conditions under which they operate, but what i say is that this is a very, very Friendly Institution to the families of veterans. Im sure we have programs on campus that cater to veterans and their families. One thing i will like to say, its a destination for wounded veterans. We are presently building a center for wounded veterans in Higher Education. Thats coming up. Education and Research Issues for us. When you look at the history of the university of illinois, a lot of standouts, all those were invented here or developed here at the university of illinois. So, this is an institution that has catered to veterans and their families for a long time. Actually since the beginning or end of the second world war. We have been a destination for veterans of false tribes. So i look over at what youve said and maybe you can call our Veterans Office to really seek out if you let me know your number, i will talk to our Veterans Office and i can call you and give you the information on that. So i will be waiting for the call after we leave this place here. Okay. Well go on to rob who is an educator in south burlington. Go ahead, rob. Caller thank you very much. I think one thing that were not really kind of addressing in this discussion is how broken the model of traditional Higher Education is. The financial arrangements, which are heavily dependent upon student loans, and also adjunct faculty salaries is just unattenable. You cant expect people to pay, 20, 30, 40,000 a year on education and have that education be valued when the first two years are in incredibly large classes, where theyre the debt that families are having to take are so large and its really important to recognize that there are a whole bunch of other kinds of businesses and institutions that are kind of stepping in, they can check out a player you can check out courses why arent the university of illinois or most schools accepting the for introductory classes. Introductory classes are taught by adjuncts who get paid very little money. How many students are in one of those entrylevel classes, economics 101 taught by adjunct professors . Well, we take pride in our institution that many of our introductory classes are actually taught by professors in the classroom. That is something we take pride in. We have an on going right now campus conversations on graduate education. We are reimagining, rethinking how we teach our students. So you can check it out. Anybody can check it out that our students and our commitment on our campus is that many of the firstyear probably all of the firstyear education is provided by professors. We may have adjunct we dont call them adjunct here, we call them specialized faculty. We want to develop great professional tracts for those individuals if they choose to remain on our campus for a long time. So we are i dont know about other schools, but this is something that we are committed to, okay . The model for Higher Education, the caller said is broken. I dont know whether its broken, but what i can say is that we are partner of the cosara company. We use them for outsiders and also for our students in terms of free classrooms. Students taking those listening to those lectures and then coming to class to ask questions. So these are we are looking at other model possible to make sure that we can deliver education at the lowest cost possibly in this particular economy. Jim is next in robinson, illinois, parent there. Go ahead, jim. Caller yeah. My son may i add one more may i add one more thing is that the student faculty ratio at our campus is 191. Student faculty ratio is 191. We take pride in that making sure we touch the students who come to our campus. Lets hear from jim. My son is a senior in high school. Were about two hours south of champaign and its a Land Grant College for illinois. And our schools it seems like our kids somehow kind of are less of a disadvantage, like they dont push math and science enough so they meet the entrance exams for say a big ten school, university of illinois. For a lot of people down here in the farm belt would really like their kids to go because were like fifth Generation Farmers down here, and i just wanted to know is there some kind of program that gets kids if their families have lived in illinois all their lives kind of help to get them in there, you know, so many people around here say, well, if youre not from a foreign country or Something Like that where your math and science is good, you cant go to the university of illinois. Okay. Well, we are working with actually teachers from local schools to really start improving the standards, giving them more ammunition in terms of teaching students. And one thing that were looking at and were on our way to implementing them is using a mook platform to start partnering with high schools that do not have teachers in math or physics or chemistry or things in that area. So that we can start engaging the local families and local schools, preparing the students to be able to partake of the education at this institution. So thats something that we are looking at very, very seriously because in the farmland, we want to make sure that the opportunities is flat, were provide a flat grant we provide a flat environment for students from any area or any financial background or academic strata to be able to come to university of illinois. So thats something you may actually see some of our faculty tor college of education come into the area and talking to teachers in high school. Were running out of time here. The house of representatives is about to come in for their morning session. So let me go to a tweet, if i could, real fast. This is from one of your viewers who wants to know how large is the International Student body, according to the campus paper, they put together this graphic, this map that shows theres 658 students from china, 132 from india, 126 from south korea. Singapore, 21 students and taiwan, 18 students. Why is there this International Presence at the university of illinois . Yes. Well, the university of illinois over the last 100 years actually we have a rep putable history of engaging International Students. If you go to china, ive been there, to a university there, actually you find out the campus is modelled after the university of illinois urbanachampaign. We trained the first architects in china at this university. You can find that i was an International Student once. I came and i stayed and i believe many International Students come and stay in this country. Because of the opportunities. And we have over 5,000 freshman from the state of illinois. Those are first stake holders. We have a lot of students of illinois over the last many years we have grown and we have taken out of state, not only International States but students from california we have a lot of students from california, new jersey and from around the country. So this is an international environment. We always say that our students can do study abroad, illinois students can do study abroad on campus. We are very proud that we have a global reputation. And i apologize, mr. Adesida. We have to leave it there. We continue with Indiana University president michael mcrobbie. This morning, the cspan bus is on the campus of Indiana University in bloomington. On it, we are joined by the president of Indiana University, michael mcrobbie. Thank you very joining us. Delighted to be here and welcome to Indiana University. Thank you for the invitation. Can we start, president , with your general thoughts before we talk about the details of your university, but your thoughts on the greatest challenges facing those in Higher Education today . Oh, i would say that probably the greatest challenge in front of us is to continue to provide a quality and affordable education, especially to the students within the state of indiana. We are a state university, after all. And keeping that education both affordable but also ensuring its quality so that our students are graduating with very high level skills that will enable them to prosper in the workplace, i think is one of the greatest challenges. Of course that involves a whole range of factors to do with the sources of funding for an institution with a budget of 3. 3 billion. So what steps do you think have to take place in order to balance that affordability with quality . Well, i think one of the key things that we are doing in terms of affordability is we have really focussed in lazerlike in the last couple of years on the whole issue of student debt. Youre probably aware that this has got im sure youre aware that this has got enormous and appropriate national attention. And it has been a concern of ours. And so, last year we introduced a comprehensive financial lit r littersy program that involves things like modules that all entering freshman have to complete on financial littersy, courses on financial litsy. Gives students much better control and knowledge of their student debt. And what is remarkable about this is that we saw 11 drop in the amount of debt that students took on this year. And that amounted to 31 million. And what i think is remarkable about that is that if you multiplied that across all the institutions of Higher Education in the country and there are 4,500 of those, if you multiplied that, you could see how one could have an enormous impact on the amount of the student debt that students are taking on. Of course, debt is a critical opponent of affordability. Can one actually find the resources to fund an education. So that has been a really Major Program that we have been focussing on, aimed at affordability of an ininn university education. So on the larger aspect, president mcrobbie, if college was worth it, if they asked you that, how would you answer . Well, i dont think theres any doubt that college is worth it. Study after study after study shows that your prospects in the workplace in general are better with a College Degree than without a College Degree. Now, it certainly is the case that there is a growing emphasis on the kinds of skills that students are graduating with. And we have put in place in fact, i announced this last year that i asked all of our schools to comprehensively evaluate opportunities for creative degrees of certificates, associates qualifications, maesers degree and so on. And just last week we announced a new program between our very highly ranked school of business and a college of arts and sciences that will provide an accelerated bachelor plus masters degree that will provide a bachelors degree in a field like economics, mathematics and so on and oneyear masters degree in business. So thats an accelerated process and that oneyear masters degree can be completely completed online. So you can see how students in a number of different fields can graduate, go into the workplace and then complete another masters complete a masters degree online in obviously a very practical applied area of business, which is a skill that is always going to be sellable and marketing by our students. So were looking at initiatives like that across the board. We have a program already that provides certificate of business on top of writing different bachelors degrees as well. And we are very mindful and i think we have a responsibility to our students to be concerned about their welfare after they graduate. I mean, we simply cannot as an institution complete a students education and waive them goodbye and not be concerned about what happens to them then. So the programs ive described to you are really focussed in part on responding to the need for greater schools to go along with the classic kind of liberal Arts Education that we provide at Indiana University and were also mindful of the fact that inspite of the fact that unemployment is still relatively high, though falling, there are by some estimates 2 or 3 million Unfilled Positions because not enough graduates are graduating with the right kinds of skills. All of that is what were focussed on. The final part of that is a comprehensive approach across the university to really improve career consulting, career advising, sorry. Were real