business

The long-anticipated expansion of University of Minnesota's undergraduate business school is in the bag, thanks in part to the Legislature.

Private donors are on their way to reaching a $27 million goal for scholarships and construction costs that essentially will match the $26.6 million in funding from the Legislature.

A groundbreaking is planned for Sept. 28.

"We're pretty close to $20 million," said Jim Campbell, the retired Wells Fargo banker and interim dean of the business school. Most of the big pieces are coming from alumni who grew up in small-town Minnesota.

"Hanson Hall" will be named in honor of alumnus Herbert Hanson, a retired California investment manager, who made the lead gift of $10 million. Other donors include Campbell; Dave Hubers, retired CEO of Ameriprise Financial; Mac McDonald, retired chairman of Virginia's Signet Bank, and retired businessmen Larry Hinman and Don Anderson.

About half the private money, $13 million, will fund the difference between the $39.9 million construction cost and the $26.6 million pledged by the state. The other $13 million or so is expected to fund undergraduate scholarships.

"The university has a program that will match that money and that would allow us to almost quadruple the dollars we have available for undergraduate students," Campbell said. "It's a public university but it's expensive for some. We must consider access for these kids as well as just the building."

Hanson Hall will be connected to the existing Carlson School. The undergraduate school, ranked 12th nationwide by U.S. News & World Report, will be able to handle a 50 percent enrollment increase, to 2,500 students.

This is a good investment for the state, which covers less than 10 percent of the business school's operating costs.

The undergraduate school, which ranks ninth in size in the Big Ten with 450 graduates a year, turns away most applicants because of its limited capacity. Of those, 40 percent leave Minnesota to study elsewhere. Most Minnesota graduates, whether from Hastings or Hong Kong, stay in Minnesota to start or work for expanding businesses.

Guaranteed, the return to the public on this will be a lot higher than for a football stadium that will cost taxpayers $10.25 million a year for 25 years.

Early childhood investment

The Legislature made another sound, albeit too modest, investment at the other end of the youth spectrum when it increased funding for early-childhood learning including targeted day-care subsidies to working-poor families in the fiscal year that begins July 1.

The business community has rallied around this as a workforce issue, said Chad Dunkley, chief operating officer of New Horizons, the pre-school and day-care company. "Minnesota has fallen behind some other states."

On the two-year budget cycle, this restores nearly $50 million -- but only about half the $90 million that was cut from the state's roughly $300 million early-learning and day care budget during the budget crisis of 2002-03.

The Legislature approved more than what Gov. Tim Pawlenty had recommended in his preschool initiative. The Senate, led by John Hottinger, had approved an $85 million package over the next-two years. That was whittled to about $50 million by the Senate-House conference committee last weekend.

No group has taken as deep a proportionate cut as low-income kids with working-class parents over the past few years. They also lack political clout. Ironically, economic research out of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank has concluded that single-best investment government can make is ensuring that every kid is ready for kindergarten. Those who aren't ready, the research shows, disproportionately drop out of school, get into trouble and end up costing taxpayers a lot of money.

And business executives from Cargill, H.B. Fuller, Best Buy and other companies have helped form the Minnesota Early Learning Foundation, which is funding research into the most effective programs and approaches that target so-called at-risk kids and their parents. A couple of dozen business leaders and lobbyists were involved in legislative education and lobbying this spring. The privately funded foundation also got $1 million in state money to further its research and advocacy.