70 Comments - uptown progressive - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 9:04 am: Still in the campaign stage. Governing comes later. - Abe the Babe - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 9:06 am: Trying to justify the ends when the means are the ends. If team Rauner was truly sincere about “controlling” costs at universities and wanted to “help” them they would have put out a proposal. Sheesh its month 15 into this administration and they are still covering up intent, hiding true motivations, and justifying their positions with goals that have nothing to do with their actions. - Nilwood - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 9:07 am: His plan will become available right after he submits his balanced budget proposal. /s - MSIX - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 9:08 am: He should come to EIU and see the “layers” of bureaucracy. I’d say he has no idea what he’s talking about, but I believe he does. He knows he’s throwing out misinformation and doesn’t care. - Anonymous - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 9:09 am: Beth Purvis staff is working with the “superstars” at IBHE on a “effectiveness study” but IBHE still hasn’t got their data system (started seven years ago) up and running after flushing millions of state and federal dollars down the toilet. - NIUprof - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 9:10 am: The amount of damage to faculty morale and motivation is severe due to the budget impasse. The beast has been squeezed to a point where there is not much left, other than closing programs and laying off employees. How this then translates into an improvement in the education experience of college students is beyond me. - Politix - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 9:15 am: More money into the classrooms means…what exactly? - Oswego Willy - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 9:17 am: ===.., “to get more state support for universities but we also want to help them bring their costs down.=== … Poor Ms. Miller, Rauner has no intention on helping Higher Ed. How Bruce Rauner can just speak untruths to children, all the while his past of flouting his own daughter over a worthy child, is nauseating. Ms. Miller, For 14 months, Gov. Rauner has proven, he just doesn’t care about students or education unless it’s his denied Winnetka-Living Daughter, and what he can take… from another student more worthy. - Norseman - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 9:19 am: NIUprof, as an alum I’m curious as to what’s being done about it. Has the community begun to organize? You have GOP enablers who are part of the problem representing the college and community. Call them out. Don’t accept the pablum that Elisabeth received. NIU is a Rauner target. One of the details in Rauner’s ridiculous unbalanced budget proposal called for a 27% cut. The highest among the public universities. Folks need to be called to action. Vote accordingly. - MSIX - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 9:20 am: ==More money into the classrooms means…what exactly?== His goal, if I’m not mistaken, is to take the “public” out of public education. “Money into the classrooms” means tuition can be lowered to the point where state support for higher ed is no longer needed. How he expects the institutions to essentially go private without private institution tuition rates is anyone’s guess. - Anonymous - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 9:20 am: A plan from anyone in either party to do just about anything right now would be more than welcome. - The Dude Abides - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 9:24 am: Unfortunately, I agree with most of the previous posters. 14 months and not one significant piece of legislation passed to improve the lives of his constituents or improve the health of the state. He travels around the state talking about doing things but he doesn’t follow through. He is still campaigning for Governor. He just keeps digging that hole deeper by the day - Oswego Willy - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 9:25 am: If Charleston, Carbondale, DeKalb… Macomb… Edwardsville and Champaign… As towns, as “locals” as hosts to Higher Ed… If those towns trust Bruce Rauner.. They will never be the same again. Rauner doesn’t want Eastern gone, if Charleston goes too, “oh well… ” If Western goes away, Rauner will send Todd Maisch to tell Macomb … “Hang in there” This is not an accident “university towns” If you are fooled by your own GA Members, that’s on you. Vote Accordingly. - Cassandra - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 9:30 am: He is absolutely right about administrative costs and, presumably, layers of bureaucracy. This is no secret. We’ve been reading about university bureaucratic bloat in the US for decades. Pension costs. Sigh. They are part of total compensation. Why is it so hard for people to see that. When you read that an employee of wherever-public or private-has x salary plus x benefits that is the compensation-not just the salary. Pensions are not a special perk. They’re salary. Now, when you look at total compensation, not just salary, are we paying public servants too much. What’s too much? I’m not getting into that. I’m just saying, when arriving at a compensation figure, add in the value of the benefits. So, is Rauner saying indirectly that state university employees are overpaid? Spit it out. - MSIX - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 9:35 am: OW, it’s not a question of being fooled by our GA members here in Chucktown. We know where they stand. We simply have no choice in voting. Both easily won over their primary opponents and I don’t think either will face an opponent in November. For us, “vote accordingly” can only be done higher up the ballot. Righter is a hopeless Raunerite. Lost cause there. But Phillips stands to lose far more by EIU closing than he would gain from Rauner’s TA pipe dream. I don’t get his resistance to standing up for EIU. He did vote yes on one approp bill that supported higher ed, but it remains to be seen if he’ll really stand up to Rauner when it counts. - illinois manufacturer - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 9:35 am: Hammond is going to have a hard time with election .Don’t know about Dekalb. Tune into Macomb next Thursday - HangingOn - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 9:37 am: ==Vote Accordingly.== Sorry, off topic, but I keep having this incredible urge to have t-shirts printed with “Oswego Willy says: Vote Accordingly” Maybe I should run a kickstarter lol - Juice - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 9:39 am: Governor, dude, all of the members of the boards of trustees are gubernatorial appointments. Tell the boards what you expect of them and then hold them accountable. The people, through their election of you and the power given to you in Article V of the Constitution, allows you to remove them from office. Maybe have Jason read this to you some time (since I know you yourself are not much of a reader.) You may also want to tone down some of the pension rhetoric since a) they don’t pay it, and b) calling the state’s SURS contribution part of our support for higher Ed is counter to your rhetoric about CPS getting all these special deals. And levels of bureaucracy, where does the children’s cabinet or all these new agencies fit into that? - Jon - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 9:41 am: What Rauner fails to understand is that tuition costs are not going to go down by any actions he takes because they are artificially inflated by students having easy access to student loans. More than 50% of UIUC students receive loans so any state funding cuts will just cause the universities to raise tuition and as there is no tuition cap for student loans, students will just be further in debt upon graduation. I want to believe that Governor and his staff are not unintelligent people, and I generally agree with them that the costs of government are too high, but the fix requires action, not just hostage taking or some magical overarching plan to fix everything wrong in the state in one fell swoop. A fix can be simple, maybe fund the universities and 90% of FY 15 amounts and tell them if they can reduce administrative costs by 5% we’ll fund you at 95% of FY 15 next year, otherwise you drop to 85%. - Anon - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 9:43 am: ===to get more state support for universities but we also want to help them bring their costs down.=== This is a completely empty platitude. Where’s his bill? where’s his specific reform? Governor Rauner loves tying funding promises to conditional demands. Saying that he wants to help bring down university costs is like me telling someone to have a nice day. Creating a fiscal crisis that will require them fire hundreds or thousands of employees and risk their ability to borrow for capital projects isn’t “helping.” That’s the same thing as teaching a working family to lower their bills by cutting their income. Help isn’t the right word. Our universities need to start discussing canceling the 2016-2017 athletic season in light of not receiving fiscal year 2016 funding. - Anon - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 9:45 am: ===If you are fooled by your own GA Members, that’s on you.=== This is actually a project I am working on. - Fusion - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 9:45 am: What will happen to property values in Charleston, Carbondale and Macomb when these schools shut down? Probably not a big deal. I imagine most of the home and business owners in those towns have robust stock portfolios, so they can take a hit on their real estate investments. /s - A guy - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 9:50 am: What amazing scenarios are, being contemplated. Now it’s not just the schools, it’s the towns they’re in that are on the enemy list. You forgot to state that CSU will devastate Chicago. Oh, wait, it’s already devastated. My bad. This is very peculiar logic. - Small Business University town - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 9:53 am: Rauner + NO balanced budget proposed as is required by our constitution + Rauner turarand= no budgut= cut universities and ALL state supported agencies = layoffs or shutdown = small businesses suffering = Close or layoff more workers = no new tax = no new business = NEW representatives in Springfield - Small Business University town - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 9:55 am: Rauner + NO balanced budget proposed as is required by our constitution + Rauner turarand= no budgut= cut universities and ALL state supported agencies = layoffs or shutdown = no custmers + small businesses suffering = Close or layoff more workers = no new tax = no new business = NEW representatives in Springfield - Oswego Willy - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 9:57 am: Oh - A Guy -… lol.. Face it, Rauner wants Illinois universities decimated, and those college towns off the map. After 14 months, it’s not an accident. Rauner vetoed Higher Ed funding… What’s that? A love note to Charleston? - OswegoTim - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 10:02 am: A Guy…if you can’t see the difference between the effect on Chicago losing CSU would have and Macomb losing WIU or Charleston losing EIU then I don’t know what to tell you. - olddog - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 10:03 am: With all due respect, this stuff about “layers of bureaucracy” is true enough, but in this context it’s entirely meaningless. The only way to have “money going into the classroom” is to appropriate the @#$% money. The reason tuition is going up at the public universities, not just in Illinois but state schools nationwide, because state government is weaseling out of its historic commitment to higher ed funding. Rauner’s only an extreme, and extremely disingenuous, example of the trend. - OswegoTim - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 10:06 am: A Guy…here is a clue. Macomb population is under 20k. WIU student enrollment is over 8k. This doesn’t even include faculty at WIU or businesses that depend on the students and faculty spending money at their establishments to keep them open. - Oswego Willy - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 10:06 am: Dear - OswegoTim - “Small world!” OW - Earnest - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 10:07 am: I’m not sure Rauner can rise above his natural business acumen in his approach to the universities: take a business, cut expenses to the bone, higher less expensive (and qualified) people to provide the direct service, how a good balance sheet, leverage debt, declare bankruptcy and walk away wealthier. That’s not to say a thoughtful, planful approach to helping universities be cost efficient would not be a good thing. Especially if it includes ways state requirements and restrictions may be impacting costs as well. - Chucktownian - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 10:07 am: I have a suspicion that Rauner has yet to actually look at administrative costs at the regionals vs. U of I institutions. He might be a bit surprised if he were to do so. As I always say, the fat cats will be fine because there is lots of fat they can cut. However, the lean institutions that are efficient (you know what legislators claim they want) are the ones who will be totally hosed by all of this. Rauner apparently understands nothing at all about public higher education. We’re just the most prominent hostage he holds. - Anonymous - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 10:10 am: Put the money into the classroom What should these moneyed classrooms look like? Last I knew, Education is a SERVICE provided by teachers, professors. They plan, direct and impart instruction. It is their efforts we pay. When I see a doctor, I’m not going to see a beautiful patient room. I’m asking for a diagnosis and advice. The doctor is who I’m there to see and pay for informatioin. Amazing how words can get twisted up. OK, let’s eliminate the entire staff of universities and make classrooms available. That’d be real cheap. Students….have at it.Educate yourselves in splendor. - Ghost - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 10:11 am: so a man who makes 53 million a year off of, inter alia, raising the cost of drugs and the cost of nursing home care, says we need to cut pay at universities because the people make too much? What if we said people with income over X amount make too much and should be taxed higher? last note, Rauner makes more money on the decrease in the inc tax he let happen then he ever would from the salary as gov, so he has a financial interest much larger then most in taking salaries from others to keep his 9 homes etc…. - jerry 101 - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 10:12 am: Well, when you close EIU and CSU, you’ll certainly reduce aggregate administrative costs across all Universities. #Winning - Mama - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 10:13 am: “One of the challenges in our university system is that a lot of the money that goes to the schools is going to the administrative costs, the pension costs, the layers of bureaucracy..” This is what I think Rauner is really telling the kids. Everyone (except his team) who works for the State, including universities, make to much money & should not have a pension plan. “Layers of bureaucracy” means Rauner wants to get rid of laws plus rules and regulations governing higher ed. and everything else. - 47th Ward - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 10:16 am: You can’t cut your way to greatness. The public universities have been cut repeatedly since 2003. Cutting them further isn’t going to bring any improvements at all. And Rauner’s talk about getting more “money into the classroom” belies a profound level of ignorance as to how universities function. That’s pablum, not policy. - Mama - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 10:17 am: To the university towns, don’t pay attention to what your politician said, find out how he/she votes in Springfield. If your state representative or senator does not vote according to your wishes, run someone against them and vote them out of office. - A guy - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 10:24 am: ===Face it, Rauner wants Illinois universities decimated, and those college towns off the map.=== Just beyond silly. And your Cousin Tim of O ville, I was pointing out the preposterousness of the entire foolish argument. The war on Higher Education. It’s just dopey. Really dopey. - A guy - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 10:29 am: === OswegoTim - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 10:06 am: A Guy…here is a clue. Macomb population is under 20k. WIU student enrollment is over 8k. This doesn’t even include faculty at WIU or businesses that depend on the students and faculty spending money at their establishments to keep them open.==== Does it ever begin to occur to you how many students attend this very fine institution (along with the other state schools-which are all very good) who pay the “entire” freight of what it costs to go there? By comparison it is most of them. Winning the hearts and minds of people who didn’t “catch the breaks” on assistance of any material level is a little tougher than one might think. Because they paid for it. All or nearly all of it. The sympathy meter just not be spiking for those folks. - State worker - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 10:30 am: Without pensions, we won’t have teachers. And many have the possibly unconstitutional Tier 2 pensions anyway. Should students pay tuition and teach themselves? - northernwatersports - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 10:32 am: I’d like to know if anyone from the News-Gazette followed up with a request to see the Gov’s proposal…and did anyone follow up with Elisabeth Miller to see if she was satisfied (or otherwise enlightened by) with the Gov’s answer to her question. I know I wouldn’t have been enlightened OR persuaded…. - A guy - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 10:38 am: ==Should students pay tuition and teach themselves?=== Dude, you’d be stunned… - olddog - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 10:39 am: === Should students pay tuition and teach themselves? === We already have that. It’s called “digital learning,” and it’s only one of the corporate shell games that are wrecking public education. I’ll link you to a good summary for K-12. Things aren’t as bad in higher ed, yet, but you can bet it’s coming — and you can bet when it does, the governor’s hedge fund cronies are going to make a big pot of money off of it. http://dianeravitch.net/2013/09/10/what-you-need-to-know-about-virtual-charter-schools/ - A guy - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 10:40 am: ===…and did anyone follow up with Elisabeth Miller=== Yep, they caught up with her at Arnold’s Malt Shop right before the sock hop. /s - cleanairguy - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 10:40 am: “Bringing costs down”? cutting “administrative costs, the pension costs, the layers of bureaucracy”? If Gov is concerned about costs, why isn’t he looking at our state universities subsidizing money losing athletic programs through tuition/fee increases on students? article in Alton Telegraph few days ago raises some interesting questions. Seems like almost every program in the college athletic program in the country is soaking students, driving tuition increases. Who is looking at the picture in IL?? is anyone?? everyone loves sports,but priorities are priorities. https://thetelegraph.com/opinion/79714/dunphy-college-sports-robs-academics - Oswego Willy - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 10:44 am: - A Guy - 1) This ” - OswegoTim -” is on his own. 2)… ===Does it ever begin to occur to you how many students attend this very fine institution (along with the other state schools-which are all very good) who pay the “entire” freight of what it costs to go there? === Did it occur to you, - A Guy -, that when Rauner closes Eastern and Chicago State, it won’t matter “who” pays. There will be no University. ===Winning the hearts and minds of people who didn’t “catch the breaks” on assistance of any material level is a little tougher than one might think.=== Do you even know what that says, LOL! Hearts and Minds? Their school is going to close because of Bruce Rauner not funding Higher Ed. Capiche? === The sympathy meter just not be spiking for those folks.=== You mean when Charleston, Macomb, or Carbondale lose their economic engine, you, - A Guy -, will just say “Hang in there!” Pathetic. Rauner wants universities closed. Otherwise Rauner woukd fund them. ===he war on Higher Education. It’s just dopey. Really dopey.=== Rauner is “starving the beast” Your act is old - A Guy -, but more than that, it’s disingenuous. - Oswego Willy - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 10:47 am: ===- A guy - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 10:40 am ===…and did anyone follow up with Elisabeth Miller=== Yep, they caught up with her at Arnold’s Malt Shop right before the sock hop. /s=== Mocking a student who is calling out the governor? Are you that personally seriously flawed that to “stick up” for Rauner you mock? - Jack Stephens - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 10:48 am: Bruce, What happens to the $5 Pizza/Sandwich Franchise Small Business owners in Dekalb, Macomb, and Chwrleston when they close? At least in North Carolina they are creating jobs with their exciting new Gender Police! Because the guv’ment has to make sure your using the proper bathroom. What HAVE you done for Illinois besides enrich your own pockets - Father Ted - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 10:57 am: Gotta love how the constituent asks him about student scholarships and his answer is about bloated school administration. Besides the fact that there is no relationship between these two things, in his mind, it’s okay that the students are punished for something over which they have virtually no control? - Michelle Flaherty - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 11:00 am: Just to point out the Rauner obvious: Closing universities eliminates administrative costs. - A guy - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 11:00 am: ===Rauner wants universities closed=== Lunacy. - NoGifts - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 11:03 am: “- Juice - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 9:39 am: Governor, dude, all of the members of the boards of trustees are gubernatorial appointments. Tell the boards what you expect of them and then hold them accountable. The people, through their election of you and the power given to you in Article V of the Constitution, allows you to remove them from office. Maybe have Jason read this to you some time (since I know you yourself are not much of a reader.)” That’s a super good point. Isn’t that the reason the governor gets to make appointments? - Oswego Willy - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 11:10 am: ===Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 11:00 am ===Rauner wants universities closed=== Lunacy.=== When the funding is ZERO in a budget and/or you refuse to fund something in a budget, that, by definition, is eliminating it. Not an opinion, or a “side”, in budgets, monies tell the story. No money for Higher Ed. Sorry. - Brutus - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 11:11 am: Administrative costs at universities have certainly gone up very quickly in recent years, and are probably too high: but that’s a national problem, not a state one. And you don’t solve it by eliminating universities. Here’s an analogy. Americans aren’t physically fit. Okay, in Illinois we will solve that problem by not allowing poor people to eat! A Modest Proposal. Illinois college towns will die if universities go under. Houses already aren’t selling in Carbondale. Imagine yourself a university employee who gets fired and is stuck with a house that is now underwater. And the academic job market is sclerotic even in good times, which these are not. Or imagine yourself a student from southern, western, or eastern Illinois who can’t just pick up and move to a functional state to get an education. Or a poor kid in Chicago who was attending CSU or NEIU, and can’t leave the city. At least faculty got an education. Profs could go from tenured to bankrupt in the next year, but at least they have education and job skills. Those kids will never have a chance. - wordslinger - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 11:12 am: Guy, your-fact free insights are as convincing as always. The truth is, quite unexpectedly, Illinois public higher ed has been cut by hundreds of millions of dollars this year. Think that has an altruistic impact on the communities where they’re located, the loss of that money flowing into them? It’s also the first time since 1857 that there is no state appropriation for higher ed. That’s an accident? The governor’s weak spin aside (and I know, you’re the king of weak spin), his actions are quite clear. Let me ask you something: assuming that someone pays you for whatever it is you do, if you didn’t get paid for nine months, wouldn’t you suspect that they didn’t have your best interests at heart? - Melissa - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 11:18 am: State universities have been under attack and dealing with budget cuts since the early 2000’s. Administrative staff in particular has been decimated. Some administrators are in fact needed; faculty doing purely administrative work is a waste of their time. Rauner will kill the universities because no one in their right minds will take a job with them — under constant attack, benefit cuts, no pensions. And, at least at the lower levels of administration, those were not high-paying jobs to start with. - Chucktownian - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 11:48 am: All state universities have multiple merit-based scholarship programs to make college much more affordable. The idea (from one of the earlier commenters) that a majority of students at a public university are paying full freight is ridiculous and demonstrates you know literally nothing about how higher education admissions, enrollment and finance works. Private universities just have big fake numbers they hang out there that only the richest dopes actually end up paying. If you’re rich and a bad student, you pay that. If you’re a good student, you always pay below sticker but at public universities it’s not an outrageous cost that you’re left with whereas it still is at the privates. Public universities have relatively realistic numbers and get the prices down to actually affordable costs. Or at least they have before now. With the state universities closing, I think Rauner wants to make sure the privates can discount even less to the good students they’re competing for with the publics because he thinks everyone should go to a private school, just like he did. Rauner is utterly ignorant about public higher education. It’s terrifying that he’s our governor with that little knowledge of how it works. - Annonin' - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 12:07 pm: Could someone tell BigBrain that the pension costs are paid by GRF and not by each university? heck he’s only been on the job 15 months so we know cant learn it all - A guy - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 12:20 pm: ===Let me ask you something: assuming that someone pays you for whatever it is you do, if you didn’t get paid for nine months, wouldn’t you suspect that they didn’t have your best interests at heart?=== Let me ask you something. Are you suggesting that this whole system is predicated upon what the state pays to Higher Ed? Or does tuition bear some of the cost of universities throughout the state? Beyond that question: who is it over what length of time that prioritized this very important appropriation to be so far down the totem pole so as to be decimated by a discretionary spending policy that does not require a continuing appropriation; you know, compared to all those worthy things that do. Despite your default position of Snideness, Happy Easter Sling. Hope you find a chocolate bunny somewhere so you can enjoy a microsecond of joy. - Oswego Willy - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 12:37 pm: ===who is it over what length of time that prioritized this very important appropriation to be so far down the totem pole so as to be decimated by a discretionary spending policy that does not require a continuing appropriation; you know, compared to all those worthy things that do.=== What does this jib study even mean? Rauner refuses to fund higher education. Plain English, plain truth. - A guy - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 12:40 pm: Rauner refuses to fund without funds. Plain English. Plain truth. - Liberty - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 12:42 pm: break unions, stop pensions — He wants university presidents on board… that sums it all up - Oswego Willy - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 12:43 pm: Rauner refuses to craft a budget until the Turnaround Agenda is passed… Rauner has refused to fund Higher Ed, vetoing Higher Ed funding. Governors own vetoes. Plain English. - X-prof - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 12:50 pm: “… a lot of the money that goes to the schools is going to the administrative costs, the pension costs, ..” I’m pretty sure that pension payments go directly from the state to SURS, an organization that is completely separate from and independent of the Universities. Pension payments are a state responsibility and not a part of university budgets. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I’d say the Governor still doesn’t understand the basics of higher ed funding after more than a year in office. BTW, I agree that university administration is bloated. I’m all for reasonable trimming there, but don’t expect game-changing results. - Get a clue - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 12:52 pm: Rauner should come to Governors State Univ. 44% of GSU’s operating budget comes from the state. 65% of state funding goes toward instruction. Since FY 08, GSU’s appropriation has decreased by 13% while growing it’s enrollment by 24%. Student to management staff ratio is 3:1. Paint all the universities with a broad brush Governor. - Norseman - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 1:09 pm: === Rauner refuses to fund without funds. Plain English. Plain truth. === Yet, Rauner is spending without funds. If I recall Munger has placed this around $1.X billion. The state has funded higher education for over 100 years, yet not a penny under Rauner. Rather than developing a plan for spreading the scarce resources among the state’s needs, he’s chosen to ignore needs until it’s politically problematic for him. There is no funding for funding higher education because Rauner wanted it that way. - wordslinger - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 1:41 pm: –Rauner refuses to fund without funds. Plain English. Plain truth.– LOL, check with the comptroller on that. For that matter, check with the governor’s budget office. Tell us more about your understanding on what you’re calling “discretionary spending” and “continuing appropriations.” You seem to think you’re on to something there. - Anonymous - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 2:17 pm: “Does it ever begin to occur to you how many students attend this very fine institution (along with the other state schools-which are all very good) who pay the “entire” freight of what it costs to go there? By comparison it is most of them. Winning the hearts and minds of people who didn’t “catch the breaks” on assistance of any material level is a little tougher than one might think. Because they paid for it. All or nearly all of it. The sympathy meter just not be spiking for those folks.” A guy A guy you are delusional if you think the Gov isn’t out to destroy public higher ed. As a parent paying full freight for a student at one of our illustrious state colleges, I can tell you that in fact I have extreme sympathy for my daughters friends who can’t return b/c of lost map grants and lost student funding. Oh and btw, b/c of the Gov’s actions, I will be moving to another state so to pay their state university’s full freight b/c I won’t put that child in a situation where they can’t complete where they started. Not to mention in state Illinois tuition is going to be so high, I will no longer be able to pay full freight. Your sympathy meter may not be spiking, but you only speak for yourself. Your penny wise dollar foolish self. - burbanite - Friday, Mar 25, 16 @ 2:32 pm: sorry 2:17 is me. Sorry, comments for this post are now closed.