Kansas Governor Sam Brownback has set aside the week of April 16-22, 2012 to observe private non-profit colleges in the state for their contributions to their local communities and to Kansas.

The 18 private colleges in Kansas enroll 22,000 students annually and produce approximately 20 percent of the bachelor’s degrees awarded in Kansas each year. To help with tuition costs, private colleges award over $120 million in industrial grants and scholarships each year to their student body.

While attending school, students can give back to the surrounding community through concerts, plays, athletic events, educational programming, and volunteering. Upon graduation, half of the alumni stay in Kansas. Over 100,000 alumni from private colleges currently live and work in the state, adding to tax revenue, repopulating rural areas, and giving back to the communities in which they live.

Brownback encourages “all citizens to join in this observance by recognizing the important contributions of private colleges in the state.”