Arizona State University made a $500,000 payment to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation even as the public school was continuously hiking tuition.
The university paid the large sum to the foundation in 2014, which school officials couched as an investment in — not a donation to — the Clinton Global Initiative University event held at ASU’s Tempe campus between March 21 and 23 of last year, according to the Arizona Republic.
The event was, of course, spearheaded by the Clintons themselves — Bill, Hillary and Chelsea.
The school receives a part of its annual budget from taxpayers, however university officials have insisted that the taxpayer portion of its budget did not fund the payment to the Clinton Foundation.
“ASU played host to the CGI University in March 2014, which featured former President Bill Clinton and former secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a program aimed at bringing together college students to find practical, innovative solutions to global challenges,” ASU spokesman Mark Johnson alleged to the Republic in a statement. “The report you cited reflects the fact that the university co-invested in this educational and promotional opportunity, which was co-produced for our students, and for students from around the world. No state funds were used for this purpose.”
The revelations about the school’s payment to the foundation come just weeks after the Arizona Board of Regents approved tuition hikes for undergraduate and graduate students attending ASU during the 2015-16 academic year.
According to the Arizona State Press, “Undergraduate in-state students attending ASU will have to pay a $320 fee for one year in the fall. Undergraduate out-of-state ASU students will see a $955 increase in tuition, raising it to $25,458. Undergraduate international students will have the biggest increase in tuition, which will rise 11 percent to $27,258.”
Moreover, the board voted to approve increased costs for housing and meal plans at the university. The Republican Governor of Arizona Doug Ducey has also signed off on a budget cutting over $100 million from public universities in the state.
The tuition hikes aren’t isolated incidents, either. As Campus Reform points out, ASU students have been experiencing tuition increases throughout the last 10 years. The cost to attend the school has nearly doubled in that time.
Alas, even as the university demands more money from students and sees losses in funding, it still was able to scrape together half a million dollars to give to the Clintons.
