41 Comments - Colossus - Thursday, Mar 1, 12 @ 11:14 am: I fear that all the talk about legislative scholarships (which are awful and should have been gone decades ago) will lump this in with the “state government moochers” framework. I think the tuition waivers for employees are a great recruitment and retention tool. As a person with skills applicable to that kind of work, I know I would look long and hard at a position with a university, knowing that my children will go there with that discount. If you want to attrac and retain quality employees and keep the University of Illinois as a (no exaggeration in the least) world-class education facility, ya gotta get the best and the brightest to work there. That means professors AND administrators. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater on this one. - 47th Ward - Thursday, Mar 1, 12 @ 11:24 am: ===And while this bill is generally reactive in nature, the point is well-taken that universities are giving out a heckuva lot of these waivers.=== Yes, that’s true. Universitities have a lot of employees, and if their children get accepted and want to attend the university their parent works for, they can apply for a waiver. It’s a great perq for university employees and their families. It’s one of the reasons that university jobs are great and it builds a strong sense of community and commitment to the university among faculty and staff. I sense this is more sour grapes that reactive though. Tuition waivers for university employees are almost universal throughout the country in higher ed. I guess Illinois wants to get rid of it for spiteful reasons since it won’t save a dime. But getting rid of it will make our universities less attractive for top faculty and staff. Spite is rarely a good basis to implement public policy. - Stooges - Thursday, Mar 1, 12 @ 11:25 am: To say that community mental health centers are “tapped out” is an understatement. Three consequetive years of cuts and delays in payments has resulted in a service system that cannot meet the needs of people who are chronically mentally ill. - Robert - Thursday, Mar 1, 12 @ 11:27 am: Regarding the bill to end the 50% break for children of university employees, two questions: 1) (see the story Rich linked to) How can one estimate of the cost of this be $387 million and another estimate be $8 million? 2) How does this really help the state’s budget - would this simply increase each university’s revenue from students, which in theory would mean that each university would need less state support, but if that’s not in the bill, then this doesn’t really save the state money. - Be Fair - Thursday, Mar 1, 12 @ 11:30 am: Good Point Colossus. Also, what can get lost in this debate is that the student must still pay half the tuition, plus 100% of the fees and housing. When all fees are added in, it’s more like a 12% discount. In fact, in many cases the discount only brings the public university costs down to match what many private colleges offer students, since private schools have much more flexibility to offer academic scholarships — which have been all but eliminated from public universities. Point is, there is some value not only for recruiting these employees, but also to recruiting middle-class students who tend to be high achievers because of their backgrounds. If you oppose this, fine, but I hope people will get their facts straight. - Colossus - Thursday, Mar 1, 12 @ 11:32 am: Robert - That assumes that all the children of employees will be coming back and paying full price.* And i’m willing to bet that a whole heckuva a lot of them won’t be able to do that, because they’ve been planning on this waiver for at least the last 7+ years, if not more. *disclaimer: I haven’t had time to read the bill, there may be some qualifier in there for people already grandfathered in. If that’s the case, then these savings (which I doubt will be as high as $8M, and simply laugh so hard I need to change my pants at the $387M number) won’t even appear for the state for at least another 7 years. To reiterate 47th Ward: Spite is rarely a good basis to implement public policy. I would bump that up to never, personally. - ChicagoR - Thursday, Mar 1, 12 @ 11:34 am: 47th Ward is absolutely correct that tuition waivers for kids are common in higher ed. I work for a private university, and many of my colleagues are here because they know their children will be able to come here for free (not just half off like mentioned above). If they didn’t get that waiver, we’d have a tougher time recruiting candidates. - Robert - Thursday, Mar 1, 12 @ 11:41 am: ==simply laugh so hard I need to change my pants at the $387M number== Good point. What’s half of state university tuition these days - $7k? $387,000,000 / $7,000 = 55,286 students at state universities who are children of university employees. LOL! - No Ivory Towers - Thursday, Mar 1, 12 @ 11:45 am: Sorry but when Atate University Officials started fallping their gums over Legislative scholarships they should have known this was going to happen. And yes Legislative scholarships should have been gone a long time ago. However, are these folks that get education waivers actually qualified to go to that particular university or are they just given a pass. Costs - it doesn’t matter how much it costs in this day and age with rising tuition costs and the economy the way it is no one should recieve these breaks, period. Recruitment and rentention that same agrument can be used for about anything, a reason to not change the pensions, a reason to get better state employees, a reason to get better legislators…PLEASE….plus in the long run it would save Big Money to just pay the top notch educators more instead of giving these out - Colossus - Thursday, Mar 1, 12 @ 11:51 am: Ivory Tower: It sounds like you would like to treat our university employees the same way as the third-shift fry cook at Arby’s (no pension, no benefits of any sort beyond a paycheck), and then tell them they should be happy with that. It appears we have a difference in opinion about the value of having a world class higher education system in Illinois. I would like to have an environment that is innovative and promotes big ideas, the kind of place creates the first computer, the Internet, plasma TVs (or was it LCDs?). You seem to want a dispirited and demoralized workforce that will produce poorer outcomes, thus justifying fewer state dollars, until the whole thing ends up privatized. And we all know how privatized colleges that look out for their bottom line first and foremost work out. You are fully entitled to your opinion. But I would be interested in hearing a reasoned argument beyond the bumper sticker “Illinois is broke and they’re all crooks” canard. - soccermom - Thursday, Mar 1, 12 @ 11:57 am: I just looked online, and in-state tuition at U of I is about 12,000. Half of that is $6,000. So Arroyo’s figures suggest that there are 64,500 students currently in the state university system who are children of university employees. - wordslinger - Thursday, Mar 1, 12 @ 12:06 pm: What 47 said. - Quinnsanity - Thursday, Mar 1, 12 @ 12:24 pm: Getting tired of the deflection, selfishness and ignorance of very important issues for the sake of posturing and pandering. Let’s close prisons, reduce parole staff and… push a bill taxing ammunition cuz it looks good in my district. OK. (can’t really blame Cassidy, that bill is just smart politics for her). Let’s reduce mental health funding, not pay service providers for 6 - 12 months and then close mental health facilities in some areas lacking sufficient support networks. OK. Let’s abuse the ILGA scholarship program, then deflect attention onto the hardworking employees at our institutions of higher learning - many of whom skipped pay increases for 2 of the past 3 years. OK. Don’t know why it still surprises and disappoints me. Perhaps I give some of our elected officials too much credit for being deeply concerned with the general welfare of Illinois. Multiple legislators did a great job of working together last year after Quinn’s distorted budget proposal. Many CoGFA members are currently doing excellent work evaluating possible closures. Others, however, apparently care much less. Let everyone else do the heavy lifting while I protect me and mine. Self-preservation trumps all for them. Doesn’t matter what party you belong to or who (state employees, their kids, weak and vulnerable citizens) gets thrown under the bus in the process. Illinois. Mile after magnificent mile. - DuPage Moderate - Thursday, Mar 1, 12 @ 12:28 pm: The current discount for long term employees of the state universities is so restrictive that is is an ineffective recruitment and retention tool. Contrast our policy (a 50% discount on tuition available to children under 25 years old of university employees with over 7 years of employment) with that available in Arizona (75% discount for children, $25 per semester for employees and SPOUSES effective immediately). - Both Sides Now - Thursday, Mar 1, 12 @ 12:54 pm: I did a little online research and found there are almost 12,000 employees at the U of I Urbana alone. All the SIU locations combined employee 14,500. Given this info, a good guesstimate for Eastern, Western, Illinois State and Northern would be 10,000 each; for Chicago State, Governor’s State and Northeastern combined - 10,000; and U of I Chicago with Springfield combined - 12,000. That totals 88,500. It’s already been said that tuition at U of I is $12,000 annually. If just 1,000 State University employees use the 50% tuition waiver perk each year at an average savings of $5,000, that equates to $5 MILLION! We have fought budget wars in the Legislature for a lot less. It’s been said the waiver is needed to be competitive and attract good employees. Well, don’t you want good employees working in the Department of Corrections, Human Services, IDOT and other agencies? Because we’re not getting that nice little $20,000 perk for sending our kids to a State University! Reality check folks - the tuition waivers are a perk for a limited few state employees; and just like the Legislative Scholarships, are unnecessary to the overall well-being of the citizens of the state. $5 Million may not seem like much but it can be better spent. - Rich Miller - Thursday, Mar 1, 12 @ 1:09 pm: ===$5 Million may not seem like much but it can be better spent.=== If it’s not appropriated, it’s not spent. - Irish - Thursday, Mar 1, 12 @ 1:29 pm: Adding my two cents with no sour grapes. I think the important thing here is what is the policy across the board with regard to perks. Over the last several years perks have steadilty been removed in a lot of agencies. The state houses that park superintendents used to get because they were required to live in the parks for security with no pay for any OT are now costing the superintendents even though the security requirement is still there. Some engineers who used to get vehicles to drive to their projects are now required to get there with their own vehicles. Some people who used to be assigned state vehicles because they were on call 24/7 365, pay taxes on that benefit and and have to thouroughly justify the use of the vehicle. In a lot of agencies there are no perks and you have to sometimes go a step further than the public to receive a service your agency provides. Are these employees less deserving of being retained than university employees? There are many biologists, engineers, scientists, that could find jobs in the private sector, yet they want to work for the public good. Do we want less than acceptable engineers bulding our highways and bridges? Do we want below average biologists protecting the natural resources that we will hand over to our children? Do we want the least capable scientist running tests on our air and water to prevent poisoning of both? Are we to charge the children of all other state employees and the general public more to attend our universities so we can make up the perk being given to the children of university workers? As is noted above there would be no pot of money available by stopping the tuition discounts. But there would be less on the deficit side that would lead to more on the funding side. Before we talk of cutting jobs and pensions for all employees, lets make the field level and then see what has to be done. - soccermom - Thursday, Mar 1, 12 @ 1:40 pm: Both Sides — First of all, you need to consider that colleges in the private sector offer faculty full tuition waivers at other schools. So if you’re a prof at U of C and your child wants to go to Stanford, U of C sends Stanford a check for the amount of U of C tuition. It already can be challenging to recruit top-quality faculty to the beautiful cornfields of central Illinois. I don’t think it makes sense to get rid of a benefit that helps to recruit and retain top faculty, helps university staff afford college educations for their children, and has no perceptible impact on the state budget. And budget wars are not actually fought over $5 million, which is less than one one hundredth of one percent of the total state budget (better known as a rounding error.) Budget wars are fought over the politics of the 5 mm, not the money itself. - 47th Ward - Thursday, Mar 1, 12 @ 1:46 pm: The state’s public universities are not state agencies, despite what many people wish to believe. They are state supported institutions and governed by their own boards. If you want our universities to operate down to the level of typical state agencies, please support this and other efforts to micromanage them. If you want them to thrive and remain one of the state’s most valuable assets, then the General Assembly needs to stay out of interfering with their operations. - John Bambenek - Thursday, Mar 1, 12 @ 1:54 pm: As somsone who has used this waiver in the past (which is not to be confused with the 50% waiver for employees’ children), I thought it instructive in how it actually works (at least at the University of Illinois in Urbana. I was able to take any class I wanted without cost as long as I registered. However, the first day I could register was 4 days AFTER classes began. Then I could only register if there were openings (or by begging the professor for an exception). What does this mean in the fiscal sense? It means these waivers are “no cost” in the general case. The classes happen anyway, so the instructor gets paid regardless. You’re only taking empty seats, and while that means marginal more work to grade papers and the like, instructors are salary and not hourly (with few exceptions for graduate assistants who are hourly, and overwhelming majority who are not in teaching roles) and thus the “extra work” isn’t paid for by the University anyway. Extra costs in paper and incidentals, sure, but that doesn’t add up to anything even close to “on the radar”. - frayedcat - Thursday, Mar 1, 12 @ 2:03 pm: As a person who has spent my entire professional career in High Education, this type of Benefit is standard for most (never say ALL in Higher Ed) desirable educational institutions. I know that in central IL it is a perk that gets used for clerical staff and IT staff so that we can pay lower wages than the large industrial employers in the area. - Small Town Liberal - Thursday, Mar 1, 12 @ 2:04 pm: - Extra costs in paper and incidentals, sure, but that doesn’t add up to anything even close to “on the radar”. - About what I would expect from a “tax and spend” liberal…Oh wait… - capncrunch - Thursday, Mar 1, 12 @ 2:22 pm: A December 2011 IHBE report said the state’s public universities issued 2,234 of tuition waivers last year to children of employees. The total value was $8.16 million. The UIUC granted 622 of these waivers at a cost of $3.2 million. The UI also issued 466 General Assembly scholarships at a cost of $5.2 million. - wordslinger - Thursday, Mar 1, 12 @ 2:26 pm: –What does this mean in the fiscal sense? It means these waivers are “no cost” in the general case. The classes happen anyway….== Um, no. The cost is the lost revenue from the waiver, which in the case of university employees is part of their compensation package. It’s an interesting theory, though. I think I’ll give it a try. “Hello United Airlines? Do you have any empty seats in first class to Honolulu? You do? Well, since you’re going to fly there anyway, how about I just slip into that empty seat at no cost to you — or me.” - 47th Ward - Thursday, Mar 1, 12 @ 2:30 pm: Word, when you start working for United you’ll have that chance. Lol. - wordslinger - Thursday, Mar 1, 12 @ 2:54 pm: –Arroyo said the practice costs the state about $387 million a year. That money could be used to cover other state expenses, he said.– How does Arroyo arrive at that wild figure anyway? And is he under the impression that tuition payments go in the state’s general fund? - John Bambenek - Thursday, Mar 1, 12 @ 3:05 pm: wordslinger- Actually, I would have never taken the classes had they not been free to begin with. So it’s not lost revenue because I wouldn’t have taken the class. And since you mention United Airlines, I do know they offer space available flights to their employees at low-cost/no-cost. I can’t speak with intelligence on the details, but from time to time when I flew, I chatted with employees going somewhere as long as they were willing to fly everywhere on standby with no reliability. You assume employees would pay to take “a class or two” without the waiver. An overwhelming majority of the time, they won’t. If I wanted to learn C programming, for instance (bad example, I already know it, but roll with me), there are far cheaper ways to do it than at University of Illinois prices. In short, it’s not lost revenue because they never would have monetized it to begin with in the general case. Like I said, that’s general case. I do know a few people who, for instance, got their entire law school paid for, but that’s a special case. And it’s routine to offer graduate students assistantships which include tuition waivers, where does that fall? - Both Sides Now - Thursday, Mar 1, 12 @ 3:08 pm: 47th - Did you not see the 30 pages in the budget book devoted to the State Universities and Higher Education? Yes, they may be governed by their own boards, but who appoints the members? The Governor! @Soccermom - Frankly, I don’t care what the private institutions do - they aren’t supported by my tax dollars. And in general, their tuition is so high they have to give away scholarships to achieve any kind of respectable diversity numbers. Further, I really don’t think our University employees are more underpaid than any other public employee, so why do they deserve help to “afford college educations for their children” any more than the rest of us? @Capncrunch - thanks for the informative numbers! Though some would say the numbers are small, let’s put it in perspective this way: The 2013 suggested appropriation for Blind Rehabilitation Services is $9 million; Developmental Disability Services is $5 million; Refugee & Immigration Integration is $6 million; and Youth Development & Delinquency Prevention is $1 million - all in the Department of Human Services. Do you think any of these could use more money? Worse yet, can you imagine the outcry if they were zeroed out? Rich, you are right - the tuition waiver funds are not specifically allocated but the point is, the money has to be made up somewhere - higher tuition for others, lack of general building maintenance, smaller staff numbers. @ Irish - THANK YOU! This is exactly what I’m talking about: “Are we to charge the children of all other state employees and the general public more to attend our universities so we can make up the perk being given to the children of university workers? As is noted above there would be no pot of money available by stopping the tuition discounts. But there would be less on the deficit side that would lead to more on the funding side.” - soccermom - Thursday, Mar 1, 12 @ 3:28 pm: @BothSides — As a taxpayer, I feel that I have an interest in making sure that the institutions my taxes support are high-quality. Otherwise, why bother? - Both Sides Now - Thursday, Mar 1, 12 @ 3:54 pm: @soccermom - When less than 3 percent of the employees are using the perk, then it’s doubtful it’s much of a game-changer in recruiting “top-quality faculty to the beautiful cornfields of central Illinois.” - soccermom - Thursday, Mar 1, 12 @ 4:19 pm: @Both Sides Less than 3 percent at any one time. And for longtime employees, I am sure the percentage is higher. (Because this benefit only kicks in after seven years, I’m guessing a large number of employees never qualify.) But it is certainly a big issue for families with kids. (I speak as someone who will literally be paying off my children’s college loans until I am 80.) Look at it this way — this is a benefit that helps longtime employees who have made a real professional commitment to the university, and who respect the institution enough to send their children there. It’s also a valuable benefit that does not add to the hole in the pension system. It helps state universities hang on to some of our best and brightest students; all things being equal, would most faculty brats choose to stay in town with mom and dad instead of heading out to the bright lights of Madison or Ann Arbor? If we keep those kids in-state for college, we may be able to keep them around after graduation. To me, as a taxpayer, these are important issues. - Anyone Remember - Thursday, Mar 1, 12 @ 4:32 pm: Re ending university employee benefit. Typical Illinois - the Lords of the various manors get caught with their hands in the cookie jar, and rather than eliminate their access to the cookie jar, their response is to punish the serfs. - soccermom - Thursday, Mar 1, 12 @ 4:33 pm: @Word — actually, the whole “friends and family fly very cheap” thing is a great asset for recruiting, because it’s a terrific perk for employees and does not, in fact, increase costs for the airlines. (Big hotel chains have similar programs, I believe.) - Both Sides Now - Thursday, Mar 1, 12 @ 4:54 pm: @soccermom - I agree it’s 3 percent at one time but I imagine the majority of employees have a significant tenure and would qualify if they had children of the right age. I have two relatives that have been employed at Universities for decades and between the two of them, sent 5 children through school. “Faculty brats” may choose to stay in town because of the perk but may do so even without it because they can stay home and avoid room and board costs. If they went to the “bright lights of Madison or Ann Arbor” the out-of-state tuition would be twice as much as staying in Illinois. I too realize a quality education is essential and currently support children in a state university. The only way they/I could afford it is because of student loans that I too will be paying on for years to come. But though I’m publically employed and every bit as good at my job as my relatives or any other University employee, I don’t get the $5,000/year perk. So in the long run, my kids and I are paying for theirs twice - through taxes and tuition. Sorry, you will never convince me that the university employee tuition waiver system is fair or necessary. - soccermom - Thursday, Mar 1, 12 @ 5:21 pm: @both sides The point I was trying to make is that this particular perk is common throughout higher education, and I think it would have a very negative longterm effect on our state university system if it were dropped — and it wouldn’t save much money. Different jobs have different perks. Like you, I have worked in the public sector — and I changed jobs, in part, because my current gig offers me a tuition waiver for grad school. That doesn’t mean that I’m better at this job than I was at my old one; it just means that this employer offers that specific perk to employees. However, I don’t get nearly as many paid days off — but on the other hand, I’m not being asked to take unpaid furlough days, either. I guess I figure that most of us have skills that we could put to use in a variety of workplaces, and we choose the employer who offers the right wage-benefit package to inspire us to show up for eight (or 10 or so) hours each day. Do I get a little cranky when my friends who work at U of C get the nifty tuition deal for their kids, while I shell out literally hundreds of thousands of dollars? Sure. I’m as good at what I do as they are, and that’s a tremendous benefit. But did I have the freedom to knock on the U of C’s door and ask them to hire me and send my kids to college? Yes. (In fact, I did just that.) But ultimately, for a lot of reasons, that benefit was not enough to lure me to Hyde Park on a daily basis. We’re never going to have a fair system. Is it fair that state employees in Springfield pay almost nothing for parking at the Capitol, while I had to shell out something like 16 bucks a day to park by Thompson Center? Heck, no. Was it fair that the State invested zillions of dollars into the CTA so I could take the El directly from Oak Park to Thompson Center at a subsidized price of $5.50 a day, while my colleagues in Springfield had to deal with the hassle of driving in bad weather and paying huge amounts for gas? Nope. And not to get all fact-y, but many, many state university employees don’t last for seven years. And of those who do, many probably have children too young or too old for college. So a 3 percent participation rate by university employees doesn’t strike me as particularly low. (Note to Soccerdad — Honey, I’m going to be home kind of late. Someone is wrong on the internet again…) - wishbone - Thursday, Mar 1, 12 @ 7:15 pm: “If it’s not appropriated, it’s not spent.” Sorry Rich, but that is just magical thinking. Taxpayers are paying for this unneeded perk. - DRB - Thursday, Mar 1, 12 @ 7:53 pm: The half price tuition program needs to end today. It is pure discrimination against those who are paying the full fare. Do Sec of State employees get have price license plates? Do Conservation employees get half price camping? We are talking about a govt agency discriminating as to who pays what. - Yellow Dog Democrat - Thursday, Mar 1, 12 @ 8:11 pm: Rich - If I understand the sponsor’s intent, this may be another case of either: 1) Egregious over-reporting; 2) Poor legislative drafting; 3) All of the above. The underlying sections of the compiled statutes that are deleted REQUIRE universities to provide the waivers using “shall” language. Deleting a statutory requirement is not the same as prohibiting the practice. Unless there’s another requirement elsewhere in the statute — and I’ll defer to the legal scholars from IFT or the universities on this one — if this bill passes as is, there is absolutely nothing to PROHIBIT universities from offering tuition waivers to employees. In fact, absent a governing statute, the waivers could conceivably be more generous. I’ll defer to the experts. YDD - Demoralized - Thursday, Mar 1, 12 @ 10:36 pm: wishbone: Taxpayers are definitely NOT paying for this perk. You obviously have no understanding of university funding in this state. Public universities in Illinois now provide a great majority of their funding through tuition and other revenue streams. State support has remained stagnant for years and is quickly becoming irrelevant. Hey folks, instead of being bitter about a so-called perk you don’t happen to get, which is also a perk that has absolutely no impact on the state budget, why don’t you focus on something that matters. It is unbelievable to me the things some people commenting DON’T understand. @DRB: These are NOT state employees. Give it a rest. - Yellow Dog Democrat - Friday, Mar 2, 12 @ 7:40 am: @Demoralized- What we should be asking is why Illinois has not passed the old Lang bill which provides full tuition for every high schooler with a B or better. - Yellow Dog Democrat - Friday, Mar 2, 12 @ 7:42 am: And as I said before, the only thing this bill accomplishes is a press release. Sorry, comments for this post are now closed.