Virginia Tech President Timothy Sands delivered his 10th annual “State of the University” address Wednesday.
Sands talked about the university’s impact – detailing a new report that looks into Tech’s total economic footprint for fiscal year 2025 from its operations, student spending and attracting visitors to Virginia.
“Our statewide economic impact from all Virginia Tech locations totaled $4.7 billion dollars, over 35,000jobs and $316 million in state and local tax revenue," the Tech president said. "In fact, every dollar that the Commonwealth invests in Virginia Tech through grants and non-capital appropriations returns 10 dollars in economic impact to our communities.”
Additionally, Sands said Tech is exploring what he called contingency plans for lower levels of federal and state funding in the years ahead. During the event, Sands was asked by a student about why the university accepted the federal cuts from the Trump administration and why Tech accepts investments from companies who "are currently actively supporting genocides across the globe."
Tech's president responded by saying that he shared some of the student's sentiments, and in terms of the current political environment...
"We have to stay our course and stay down the middle and do what we can to accomplish our goals," Sands said. "Inclusion is really important to us, as is the diversity of our student body and our faculty and our impact, but we have to do it within the law."
Tech's president also talked about the university’s ongoing efforts to make education more affordable for low-income students. The school lowered its average, net price for those students by two-thousand dollars last year.
