Universities reveal impasse impacts
Friday, Jan 8, 2016 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Inside Higher Ed…
SIU has borrowed against several reserve funds, heavily reduced administrative and discretionary spending, laid off about 25 employees and eliminated or left vacant another 50 positions. The university has stopped operating programs — such as research programs and training programs — that were funded by state grants but are no longer solvent because the state money has dried up and isn’t getting replaced. It’s covering the cost of MAP grants for about 7,700 students (the grants can reach $5,000 per student each year), but is warning recipients — all of whom are low income — that if the state doesn’t fund the grants, they may well be on the hook for the money. […]
Western Illinois University has spent much of its general reserves and is now borrowing from reserve funds that were never expected to be used for operating costs — like transportation funds that were earmarked for a new parking lot or health center funds set aside for a specific purpose. The result is that some areas of the university are having to delay projects, even though those areas do not depend on state funding. […]
WIU, in response to years of slowly reducing appropriations and enrollment declines (the university’s enrollment has dipped from roughly 13,000 students in 2006 to 11,100 students this fall), offered early retirement incentives to nearly 60 employees and plans to lay off around 50 faculty members in the near future. It has also begun exploring cutting academic programs with low enrollment. In the summer, EIU also announced layoffs. […]
The University of Illinois System has an administrative hiring freeze in place while it awaits state funding. This year the system expected to get $62 million in MAP grant funding from the state. Its appropriations last year were $660 million. Like other universities in the state, the system is spending down reserves, reducing spending and looking for operational efficiencies as it goes into a second semester without state funding, according to a spokesman. […]
For example, covering MAP grants for the year has cost DePaul University in Chicago about $17 million. At least one private college, the Illinois Institute of Technology, had to deny students MAP funding for the spring semester because it was uncertain it could cover the costs and remain financially solvent. Additionally, some community colleges aren’t funding the grants, either. The result, officials say, is devastating for socioeconomic and racial diversity. (The Illinois Senate did pass a bill that would have funded MAP grants, but the measure has not passed the House of Representatives.)
Not to mention enrollment declines of 4 percent at SIU Carbondale this year.
- Anonymous - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 8:51 am:
Certainly every organization doing business with the state of Illinois has some sort of contingency plans and preparations in place should state funding become delayed, reduced or eliminated?
Especially multi-million dollar organizations headed by some if the biggest brains in Illinois? Did they think they were somehow immune to the decade-long perils of Illinois fiscal condition? Maybe swelling the ranks of administrators during that time wasn’t such a good idea?
- SAP - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 8:53 am:
Oldest kid is a high school junior and looking at colleges. I cannot recommend strongly enough that she avoid public Illinois universities.
- Grandson of Man - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 8:58 am:
Pretty sad, and very Republican, these days. Hello Louisiana, Kansas and Wisconsin, may we join you?
Wait, what am I sayin’? Cool my jets, this is the short-term pain for the long-term gain of unsubstantiated benefits from widespread collective bargaining reduction, back-door union busting and prevailing wage repeal. Since the state is already circling down the drain, maybe it should go all the way, so we can rebuild from the ashes a union-free utopia of low taxes, high economic growth and fiscal health.
Rauner wants AFSCME to implement merit pay when his governance has been anything but meritorious. I’m not saying Madigan is also not to blame, because he may not be trying hard enough, but pushing for “almost impossible” [Cullerton statement] union budget concessions is really harming us. It’s not the message the boss should be sending to workers when he’s the worst example they should follow.
- VanillaMan - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 8:58 am:
It is time to begin discussing administrative consolidation of Illinois universities. The potential student base won’t pick up for at least another decade, we are going into a birth dearth decade.
We have bigger needs for community colleges as they do remedial education for high school graduates unprepared for traditional colleges. We have bigger needs for extending online learning. We have bigger needs for assisting citizens between jobs and must reeducate towards a new career path.
We cannot keep sinking millions into these vast university administrations across Illinois. Retiring boomers shouldn’t be replaced without serious consideration of the future direction of the courses they taught.
Our state universities have spent millions trying to outdo one another in student frivolities attractive to potential deciding between one state university and another. This has to end.
There is room for change and it is better for those who believe in state funded public education in driving those changes, than it is for vampire venture capitalists looking to score a few bucks for their portfolios, to do it.
- wordslinger - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 8:59 am:
Layoffs of real people, burning real cash reserves, borrowing real money, blocking real Illinois kids from Ilinois colleges….
All in the service of some rich dilettante’s obsession about his retirement hobby, for which he can’t even begin to articulate beyond weasel-words any real benefits for Illinois citizens.
Don’t you wish the dude had picked up fishing or golf?
- Oswego Willy - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 9:00 am:
To the Post,
I am guessing that parents with kids who are in their junior or senior year of high school and they read of the the fiscal crisis here in Illinois and have the option of sending their kids out of state, reports like this that continue to feed the negative narrative will weigh heavy in that decision.
If a child can go to EIU or Wisconsin-Whitewater, and all factors are the same in “preference”, why evcourage your child to go to an Illinois university that will be cutting and slashing everywhere, including learning?
If we all think parents aren’t looking at this, I think we are all fooling ourselves.
Even the flagship, UIUC.
How long before UIUC Engineering loses student after student to Purdue, or other out of state schools?
Parents have always wanted value and ROI if they are paying ridiculous in-state tuition versus getting break after break from out of state universities… that aren’t cutting the university budget in the education of their child.
- @MisterJayEm - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 9:03 am:
“Certainly every organization doing business with the state of Illinois has some sort of contingency plans and preparations in place should state funding become *** eliminated?”
State universities should have a planned for the elimination of state funding?
Are you insane?
– MrJM
- downstate commissioner - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 9:05 am:
Rauner thinks that the graduates of WIU, EIU, and SIU will just become union members, anyway…
- Michelle Flaherty - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 9:06 am:
Let them attend Dartmouth
- Ray del Camino - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 9:08 am:
Not to mention the pain this causes to the economies of the college towns and surrounding regions. I know for a fact the cuts and hiring freezes have frozen the housing market in Carbondale, to cite just one example. When Realtors don’t sell houses, they don’t get paid.
That gasping and choking sound you hear is the oxygen getting sucked out of small-town economies.
- illinois manufacturer - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 9:13 am:
Wisconsin universities have been hit by massive cuts under Walker.
- Joe M - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 9:14 am:
Rauner is always talking a pro-business climate angle - except when it comes to higher education in Illinois. How may businesses will will want to remain in Illinois if he decimates public higher ed in Illinois? How many new businesses will want to come to Illinois if public higher ed in Illinois has been decimated?
- illinois manufacturer - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 9:21 am:
I think juniors need to decide if they want to gobto college at all. With the cost and debt I would suggest community college first and then a state university…if we have any. I Just googled U of W budget cuts . Massive 300 million tenure is gone.
- illinois manufacturer - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 9:22 am:
Actually WIU did have plans for major interruptions in state funding but it needs something by fy 2017
- Joe M - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 9:23 am:
==With the cost and debt I would suggest community college first==
That is assuming that the Illinois community colleges haven’t been further decimated. Haven’t you read any of the articles? They are hurting as badly or worse than the state 4-yr schools.
- Oswego Willy - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 9:27 am:
The University of Iowa caters to out of state students with a “residency” program after year one that’s very attractive.
Mizzou also has an opportunity for freshmen to get residency after year one.
Out of state options to assist studebts with financials, and building and growing of the programs to attract out of state students make Illinois students an attractive “get” for some student bodies.
- Motambe - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 9:33 am:
Anonymous - “Certainly every organization doing business with the state of Illinois…..” Public colleges and universities are not organizations doing “business” with the state of Illinois. They are state agencies, funded by statute. And yes there are contingency plans for budget reductions, but not for budget funds withheld. Meanwhile, high school principals and parents of seniors are reporting that out of state universities are doubling down on their recruitment and scholarship offers to snare the Illinois state scholars, moving more of our best and brightest out of state. They have added to their sales pitch the scenario that state funding is paltry and unreliable, causing Illinois higher education facilities, research, and overall quality to fall behind. Even Arkansas and Mississippi are poaching our students.
- @MisterJayEm - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 9:36 am:
Once you send your kids more than a day’s drive out of state, you may as well send them out of the country, e.g. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/10/29/7-countries-where-americans-can-study-at-universities-in-english-for-free-or-almost-free/
Direct flights into O’Hare would be far more than off-set by the free tuition.
– MrJM
- Norseman - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 9:40 am:
=== Wisconsin universities have been hit by massive cuts under Walker. ===
Rauner has one-upped his idol from the north. Illinois universities have no money from the state.
- illinois manufacturer - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 9:43 am:
It makes sense.continental Europe never had the go away away to college that the US has had so you would have to find somewhere to live. Its probably a money saver ovet UC or the Ivys but not the WIU SIU market. Its just a bill but there was one introduced to strip the top universities of their tax exempt status if they dont use their endowments for scholorships
- Quiet Sage - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 9:43 am:
It looks like the Illinois public universities will be able to limp along during the coming spring semester, even the financially weaker ones such as WIU. The real crisis will come in the fall 2016 semester if the budget impasse is not resolved.
- Anon - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 9:45 am:
===The University of Iowa caters to out of state students with a “residency” program after year one that’s very attractive.===
The process at Iowa State isn’t that difficult either. In my time as a student I sat in on meetings of college leadership where a specific strategy was discussed for attracting and recruiting out of state students. This was more than a decade ago and Iowa State did so due to the demographic statistics of Iowa.
It’s nothing personal. They just recognized they needed to recruit young folks from where there were plenty of young folks.
If Illinois wants to manage their financial affairs like a bunch of drunken lunatics, that’s great. But Iowa State will still continue to see record enrollments and will still grow it’s staff, services, and academic resources.
===I think juniors need to decide if they want to gobto college at all. With the cost and debt I would suggest community college first and then a state university…if we have any===
Community college is fine — but believe me when I say the campus of a 4 year university can and does offer more to a 19 year old than the campus of a local community college does. Education is supposed to be about more than just getting a credential and having a ticket punched. For some terrible reason our society has decided to focus on the cost of education and transfer most of the cost of that education onto the student in spite of any of the public goods that are offered as an exchange.
It’s pretty apparent where Illinois’ priorities lie — and in a market system it’s silly to expect people with better options to attend universities that aren’t capable of prioritizing their education or their programming.
But hey, the AARP is threatening that all of the seniors in the state will move if you tax retirement — so lets not explore doing something that shows that the State of Illinois cares about the State of Illinois 5 years from now.
Hyperbolic discounting. It’s a thing. And it’s a thing that Illinois’ voters love.
- Joe M - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 9:46 am:
==The University of Iowa caters to out of state students with a “residency” program after year one that’s very attractive. — Mizzou also has an opportunity for freshmen to get residency after year one.==
WIU just opened up “in-state” tuition rates for all. And they have lowered tuition for new students for this coming Fall.
in-state tuition rates:
http://www.wiu.edu/news/newsrelease.php?release_id=13208
lowered tuition: http://www.wiu.edu/news/newsrelease.php?release_id=13193
- illinois manufacturer - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 9:49 am:
Rauners so called budget has a one third cut which was about 300 million so he was copying his friend to the north and you are right hebupeed him to about 900 million now. Iowa lives off its neighbors . UNI which is like our regionals is struggling but ISU is full of MN sudents and Iowa City is full of Illinois students. We are lucky Branstad dropped the AMTRAK expansion. Our scools benefit a lot from AMTRAK and I think that was a target for cuts
- CapnCrunch - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 10:14 am:
“State universities should have a planned for the elimination of state funding..”
The folks running the UI may not have ‘planned for the elimination of State funding’ but they have done a very good job doing just that. In the last half century the portion of UI operations provided by the State has declined from 67% to about 12% last year and yet they have demonstrated an ability to tap other sources of income to fund operations. They’ve managed to keep the place operating and delivering a first class education. Last year , for example, despite receiving only a .25% increase in State direct appropriations, the UI managed to increase its operating budget by 3.9% and increase its net position by over $300 million. They have done this in spite of what looks to me to be a bloated administration. Obviously, one way they have offset the loss of State funds is by raising tuition but it may be time to look at cost cutting rather than another tuition increase.
- 47th Ward - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 10:23 am:
The Senate passed a bill to fund MAP at last year’s level, which was the same level Governor Rauner proposed. It is sitting in the House. Should he choose, the Speaker could call it for a vote next week and my guess is that it would pass. If Governor Rauner let the HGOPs vote their districts on this one, then it would pass overwhelmingly.
But the Speaker won’t call it, for reasons he prefers to keep to himself while half the schools in Illinois decide which students to kick out of class. So yes, Madigan has plenty of blame for the MAP crisis too.
And I’m sure if Jason Barickman, Bill Brady, Dale Righter, Tim Bivins and some other SGOPs wanted to help ISU, EIU, etc., then they can should talk to their Governor and put a bill together. I bet they’d find a willing partner in President Cullerton, who sure seems like the only person in Springfield who gives a $%*# about the imminent collapse of higher education in Illinois.
- up2now - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 10:27 am:
EIU is considering selling off the frequency for its TV station, WEIU, for millions. I wonder to what extent this idea is being fueled by the lack of state appropriations this year?
- Dr X - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 10:32 am:
Excellent, everything is going as planned. I believe in recent Paul Simon polls, cuts to higher ed were the only ones that got some semblance of support for cuts. No one wanted to cut K- 12 or public safety or other things like that. You get what you vote for -it is a surprise how many people are surprised at that fact.
- Anon - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 10:35 am:
===WIU just opened up “in-state” tuition rates for all. And they have lowered tuition for new students for this coming Fall.===
Now they just have to deal with the reputation.
- Oswego Willy - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 10:47 am:
===And I’m sure if Jason Barickman, Bill Brady, Dale Righter, Tim Bivins and some other SGOPs wanted to help ISU, EIU, etc., then they can should talk to their Governor and put a bill together.===
Well said. On point.
Carbondale, B-N, Champaign, Quincy, Charleston, heck, even DeKalb… students and the universities that teach them drive those towns.
It’s far bigger than lab fees and adjunct professors.
To the Speaker holding MAP;
I don’t have the first clue, but if Rauner wants to ask when the GA returns, that might help(?)
- Chris - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 10:49 am:
I certainly feel badly for the folks who lost their jobs, but given the explosion in administrative headcount at colleges all over, the loss of even dozens of admin positions is probably not affecting the educational mission much. Perhaps this is an opportunity for the schools to reassess their actual needs, maybe hold the line on tuition increases bc of it, and show something to colleges elsewhere?
- illinois manufacturer - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 10:56 am:
I think Rainer said he would veto a MAP only bill….and not just admin laid off WII is 50 faculty ….
- Langhorne - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 10:59 am:
Walker cut higher ed 20%, rauner wanted to cut 30%, but no funding is even better.
Winning
- 47th Ward - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 11:02 am:
===I think Rainer said he would veto a MAP only bill===
If so, that’s simply another reason Madigan should send him the Senate MAP bill as soon as possible. There are 130,000 students counting on MAP this year. If Governor Rauner vetoes it, then all of them (and their parents) will know who to blame.
Is this really too difficult for the House Majority geniuses to figure out?
- Federalist - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 11:23 am:
Universities, like government and often businesses, have a lot of bloat and inefficiencies. I have a variety of ideas for where I taught that would be ignored by the administration because it would not suit THEIR purposes.
However, I firmly believe that this is part of a greater process to strangle public education. Much more difficult to do with K-!2 but universities with a much smaller political base are easier targets.
Rauner would just love to reduce state funding to public universities to nothing if he could. Like many of his ilk he would have expanded MAP type grants that could be used anywhere in place of direct GRF funding to the public universities.
Madigan also could care less about public universities. He spent his entire education in Catholic schools from K through Law School.
That is a potent combination of political powers lined up against the public universities.
- olddog - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 12:14 pm:
Higher ed is in trouble everywhere, and it will cost us dearly in the long run. My grandfather came to America 100 years ago so he could afford to go to seminary, and he served as a pastor in Norwegian-American churches for the next 30 years. Last year I compared student costs at his seminary in Minnesota with the faculty of theology at the University of Oslo. It is now marginally less expensive for American students back in Norway.
- Sick & Tired - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 12:29 pm:
In regards to falling enrollment - totally understandable. As I commented on a similar story yesterday, I have a sibling heading to college soon for engineering - IIT is, well, was, his top choice. He’ll likely be heading out of state thanks to Rauner & Co.
- cdog - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 12:38 pm:
Jan 27, 2016 — Governor’s State of the State
Feb 17, 2016 — Governor’s Budget Address
So, he is going to tell us “what!?!” about Higher Ed on these dates…..
- Norseman - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 12:40 pm:
=== Feb 17, 2016 — Governor’s Budget Address
So, he is going to tell us “what!?!” about Higher Ed on these dates….. ===
“Because Madigan!”
- illini - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 12:47 pm:
Norseman - exactly! Deny, deflect blame, “I feel for your situation”, but it is not my fault!
- DuPage - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 12:52 pm:
@Joe M 9:23 =(Community Colleges) hurting as badly or worse then the state 4-year schools.=
A few of the C.C.s have some reserves, many do not and are down to their last penny. Originally, their funding was to be about 1/3-1/3-1/3 property tax, tuition, state funding. In some suburban districts, the local property tax is now about 1/2, tuition and fees 35%, state 5%, federal and renting space to non-profits (like day care for single mothers re-entering the workforce, who also had their funding cut) 10%). Rauner cut the 5% state money to zero, he has withheld the federal money he was entrusted with and he has caused the non-profits to not be able to pay their rent. Total Rauner loss of at least 15% of C.C.’s budgets, devastating to many of them. I am surprised a federal judge or federal agency has not taken steps to release the federal money and map grants that Rauner is withholding. It would help a lot.
- ZC - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 1:01 pm:
47th Ward raises an excellent point.
There are a lot of House Repubs from suburban districts who wouldn’t love being labeled as “helped kill the MAP Grant program.”
Lack of House action on the Senate MAP bill does suggest that Madigan is biding his time and looking at all the pieces on the chessboard (and, yeah, maybe weighting just where the scarce $$ is going to go, ultimately, considering how far we are in the hole now).
It would be an interesting test to see if Rauner really vetoes MAP funding, seeing as that is an issue some of his voters will care about, but then again, that’s more money then locked up and actually funded, in a shrinking pie.
Or maybe it’s something else. Point is, I agree it’s curious that this is an issue where I’d imagine Madigan would have Rauner on defense, but he must have his own calculus why Mads doesn’t want to move on it.
- ZC - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 1:04 pm:
I suppose on one front you can fairly say that a lot of college students, upstate and downstate alike, slept through the 2014 midterm / gubernatorial. If something isn’t done on the college funding front and soon, they’ll be more awake in 2016 and in 2018. But whom will they blame?
- Annonin' - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 1:23 pm:
The University of Iowa caters to out of state students with a “residency” program after year one that’s very attractive.
Mizzou also has an opportunity for freshmen to get residency after year one.
But Mr/Ms OW that means a student would need to live in Iowa or Missouri right? Been there No thanks.
- Concerned - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 1:30 pm:
What will decimating our public (and with cuts to MAP, private) universities do to the business conditions in Illinois? It won’t be pretty, that’s for sure.
- Oswego Willy - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 1:39 pm:
===But Mr/Ms OW that means a student would need to live in Iowa or Missouri right? Been there No thanks.===
That’s the Sulfur to the Molasses, lol. Point given.
Short term pain I think Gov. Rauner calls it?
- Beaner - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 2:26 pm:
up2now - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 10:27 am:
EIU is considering selling off the frequency for its TV station, WEIU, for millions. I wonder to what extent this idea is being fueled by the lack of state appropriations this year?
Dear Up2Now, I think the FCC is looking for Cell Phone friendly bandwidth. If the Universities sell their UHF Cell phone friendly bandwidth, the FCC currently has a deal to help get them replacement VHF bandwidth. It depends on availability by market, but EIU may have lucked out. They may end up with a wheel-barrel of cash, and change their broadcast to a TV number between 2 and 13. If they cannot get replacement bandwidth, then they will be forgoing Over the Air broadcasts and going strictly to the Net.
- Joe M - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 2:53 pm:
Lets not forget that the General Assembly already passed a higher ed appropriations bill that funded state universities and MAP grants. That bill had a 6.8% cut over the previous year’s higher ed funding.
However, Rauner vetoed that bill. If he didn’t like the appropriation levels, he could have used the powers the Constitution gives him, to change the figures to his liking. But instead he chose to veto the bill. Rauner owns the cuts to higher ed.
- Anon221 - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 2:56 pm:
illinois manufacturer -
I think Rainer said he would veto a MAP only bill….
****
I agree with some of the other commentators- let him! After all, the 2016 budget is a piecemeal budget many up of tiny little budgets. Bill Brady said so- http://wglt.org/post/people-are-angry-about-state-budget. Rauner’s idea of a “diet” for Illinois./s
- Anon221 - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 2:57 pm:
Sorry, apologies to Bill, it was Dan Brady.
- Former Hoosier - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 3:40 pm:
My daughter is a junior in high school. Neither she nor any of her friends are looking at public universities in Illinois. My friend is a high school college counselor who is making sure parents know what is going on financially with colleges/universities in Illinois.
No parent who has options will choose to send a child to a public university in Illinois knowing that many are cutting programs and laying off teaching staff.
There will be a large brain drain in our state.
- History Prof - Friday, Jan 8, 16 @ 3:53 pm:
Ok. I hate administrative bloat at my university as well. But you know why it has happened? It has happened BECAUSE the state no longer pays for higher ed. We are tuition desperate and therefore enrollment-driven. Kids and and their parent’s checkbooks want ancillary services.
But here is the main point: One can also look at this generationally. Early Boomers went to school essentially for free at the public universities and to some extent at the privates. Late boomers paid only nominal fees at the publics, but if lower class, had Pell grants and student loans even at the privates.
Now these same people don’t want to be taxed to pay it forward to their own kids and grand kids.
How to pay for it? As every responsible citizen since Alexander Hamilton knows, progressive taxes are the basis of all civilization. Don’t believe me: move to Egypt. Wait, don’t bother. We are becoming Egypt: only the wealthy kids get educated.
So it’s a welfare cheat Republican Party because having taken the benefit, they make a virtue out of denying the benefit of education to others. And unfortunately, there are some Democrats who won’t vote to allow a progressive income tax in Illinois either.
Unable to build anything new, we are tearing down the institutions of the state, feeding off the dead. We feed off institutions that were here before we showed up. And now we are eating our own children as well.