The University of Nevada, Las Vegas, which hosted Wednesday night’s final presidential debate, once created a minor scandal by paying Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton a whopping $225,000 to speak at the school.
Clinton spoke for about one hour at an Oct. 13, 2014 fundraising dinner for the UNLV Foundation, just a few months prior to the launch of her presidential campaign. At the event, Clinton lamented the high cost of higher education and blasted for-profit colleges that “exploit students.”
But Clinton herself contributed at least slightly to the high cost of education, as she collected a tidy $225,000 for her one-hour appearance. Clinton donated her speaking proceeds to the Clinton Foundation, but that did little to assuage many students, who were irate because the school announced a 17 percent tuition hike right around the time her speech was booked.
“You could give scholarships to thousands of students, benefit research on campus, give more students grants for research and studying,” a member of the student government complained at the time.
The lucrative speech came shortly after the book tour for Clinton’s book Hard Choices. During an interview promoting the book, Clinton claimed she and her husband Bill left the White House “dead broke” following Clinton’s presidency. Since then, they have amassed a fortune worth tens of millions of dollars, and lucrative six-figure speaking fees played a critical role in making that happen.
UNLV wasn’t the only public college to pay Clinton a huge sum to speak. She collected $300,000 for a speech at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Connecticut paid a six-figure amount as well.
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