An interesting article appeared in the New York Times yesterday (3/6/2016) about the state of higher education in Illinois the base of our US centre. While politicians fight, public colleges in Illinois are collapsing.

Urbana, Ill. — This spring my friend’s daughter received exciting news: She had been accepted to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It’s our hometown campus, but also the state’s flagship public university and one of the best research institutions in the country.

My friend is a single mom with a few part-time jobs; finances are tight in her house. But the university offered them a decent financial aid package, one that would have made it possible for her daughter to attend. If, that is, it was an offer they could count on. But they couldn’t. The financial aid letter clearly stated that their award was “contingent upon continued funding” from the state, and might need to be “reduced or rescinded,” depending on what happened in Springfield, the state capital.

Ah, Springfield.

Our lawmakers have spent the last year locked in a staggering budget impasse, with no end in sight. The state is deep in debt, with mountains of unpaid bills, while the Democratic-led Legislature and the Republican governor fight a war of attrition. Another deadline just blew by this week: May 31 was the last official day of the legislative session. Still no budget. Any proposal now needs a three-fifths majority to pass, an even higher bar. Meanwhile, the collateral damage is swirling like sand in a windstorm.

Take state-funded Monetary Award Program grants. Normally awarded by both public and private schools throughout the state, these need-based grants went unfunded for nine straight months, from July to April. Most schools temporarily floated funds to cover the gap, but the money was running dry, causing some schools to either renege on grants they had offered, or even, in the case of Chicago’s Illinois Institute of Technology, to ask students to pay back the aid they had already received.

April brought a brief glimpse of hope. The passage of a temporary bipartisan spending bill keeps state universities partially funded through the summer by appropriating $600 million from the state’s Educational Assistance Fund, including funding for MAP grants. On the surface, this looked like good news. But in effect, it translates to a 70 percent funding cut for most state schools. And it’s only a temporary fix. Come Sept. 1, it will run out.

As for my friend’s daughter, she couldn’t take the risk. She went with her second choice, an out-of-state school.

Who wouldn’t be wary? Why accept an offer that provides aid in one breath, while in the next tells you the state might take it away? Students throughout Illinois, advised by nervous parents and guidance counselors, have made similar choices. And those are the lucky ones, the ones with options. Others less fortunate may give up on college altogether.

Faculty and staff are nervous, too. Public universities across the state are laying people off at alarming rates. Chicago State University, the predominantly African-American school that has made national headlines lately for its rapid dismantling, laid off 300 employees this spring. A full 30 percent of its budget comes from the state; it now says it may not be able to open come fall if the impasse continues. Downstate, in the hamlet of Charleston, Eastern Illinois University has laid off 261 employees. Over in Macomb, at Western Illinois University, the number is 110.

Even at the University of Illinois, where financial reserves are deeper, departments have had to name the employees they will cut come Aug. 27, if the budget remains stalled. In the meantime, hiring is frozen on all three campuses — Urbana, Springfield and Chicago; only essential positions are being filled. Faculty members nearing retirement wonder whether they will receive their pensions because the state has mismanaged its pension funds for decades; it’s now looking at a pension shortfall of about $111 billion.

President Timothy Killeen issued a statement on June 1 saying he was “deeply concerned” and declaring all options “on the table,” including layoffs, cuts and unit closures. In the face of so much instability, more and more professors are being wooed away: Faculty resignations were up by almost 70 percent in 2015.

Public universities were founded on the notion that all students, regardless of their socio-economic status, should have access to a high-quality education. Like the twin towns of Champaign-Urbana, our public universities are cultural oases — intellectual watering holes where students of all backgrounds can gather in the pursuit of education and knowledge. But these oases are drying up while Springfield continues its interminable standoff.

Illinoisans are fed up. Yes, the problem is gnarly and complicated. Yes, the political divisions are deep and wide, just as they are nationally. But our governor and legislators must find a way to cross them soon and to pass a functional budget, before the damage they’ve already done to public higher education becomes irreversible. Until they do, our best students will head elsewhere for college — or, even worse, nowhere at all.

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Source: New York Times - Higher Education in Illinois Is Dying by Amy Hassinger - June 3, 2016