Illinois is headed towards the anti-intellectual society as portrayed in Idiocracy. Obviously, we’re not even close to the point of sentencing people to death via monster truck rallies or irrigating crops with something like Gatorade. But we are at a point where higher education is being devalued by our state government.
It’s no secret that the Illinois budget is off-balance, and that’s putting it lightly. The state government has been awful at bookkeeping and monitoring spending. The budget issue, overseen by Democrats, is one of the main reasons Illinois collectively decided that it’s time for Republican Bruce Rauner to use his experience as chairman of private equity firm GTCR to pull back the doors, crack open the books for some budget rescue.
Rauner’s budget proposal has caused some controversy, notably within Democratic circles. In partisan politics that’s to be expected. Republican says up, Democrat says down. And, frankly, that’s not the issue at hand. Rauner’s campaign and his publicity tour after the election asked residents of Illinois for shared sacrifice as the state’s economy is supposedly turned in the right direction.
I think that’s a great idea. Everyone pays a price for the common good and all that jazz.
And with that, part of Rauner’s budget includes $300 million boost in education spending. So why am I so concerned with the idiocracy of Illinois? That boost is only towards K-12 education. The reality of the situation is that the plan is to cut $400 million from higher education spending. Simple math suggests that there’s a $100 million dollar savings on education spending and it’s by working around a balancing act of which is more important — early education, where the foundations for learning are set, or higher education where it becomes more specialized.
I’m not about to go down the path of arguing over an educational version of the chicken or the egg. But I will question the idea of cutting funding for higher education, when the state is aiming to educate youngsters better. It’s already ridiculously expensive to attend the University of Illinois so the lower class has a hard time attending; and if you’re a minority the U of I isn’t really actively courting you. So what happens when the state has more students that are capable of attending an institution like U of I, but are priced out? They head elsewhere. The goal should be keeping Illinois students in Illinois, shouldn’t it?
The issue of higher education and making sure that students have affordable opportunities in-state is not a partisan one, however. On Wednesday, Democratic state rep Jack Franks is aiming to get a bill on the House floor that calls for an end to the 50 percent tuition waivers for the children of state university employees. It saves the state a whopping $10 million.
That kind of cut isn’t going to hurt the families of administrators or professors, for the most part. As Franks pointed out, quite eloquently, “I don’t think we’re underpaying our university folks, and I really don’t think there’s going to be a stampede out the door.”
Thanks, Jack.
I think what he forgets is that there are a lot more people than just professors and admins that make a university work efficiently. From the maintenance crews to university housing and hospitality employees, it takes an army to have a well-run university.
And you know what, Jack? Those people aren’t raking in the dough. They may make a decent wage and work on a state university’s schedule, but they’re not loaded and it’s not like every employee gets a waiver immediately. It takes seven years of servitude to grab that carrot, and tuition waivers are a huge portion of taking on some of those positions.
Rep. Kathleen Willis, D-Northlake, may have put it best:
“It might not be your physics professor. It might be the janitor who chose to work at an institution for years, knowing that this is the only way he’s going to be able to afford to have his children go to school.”
These aren’t waivers that just come out of thin air and are given out so that families of university employees can stay extremely wealthy. They’re designed to help the lower-income employees, the folks that Rauner might be pricing out of college in a few years.
So when Franks brings up Rauner’s plan, suggests shared sacrifices, and follows up with this:
“If we’re serious about saving Illinois and saving education, then we have to make some difficult decisions.”
I wonder if he might have spoken to the new governor about eliminating tax-credits for the wealthy, or increasing their taxes to try and close the $10 million dollar gap he aims to close here. If we’re sharing in this sacrifice, how come those that make a lower wage have to share a little bit more?
Education isn’t free, I get that. I’m sure you get that too. But without suggesting new ways to increase revenue in the state, the cuts coming from higher education, coupled with the increase in elementary education don’t save us nearly as much as we’re supposed to believe. In the long run, this hurts people that we need to have in the university system.
Aren’t these students potential job creators, Bruce?
For the guy that said in his speech at the iHotel a month ago, “I don’t want to be behind New Jersey in anything,” this is a strange way to try and catch New Jersey. They’re second in education rankings put together by the American Legislative Exchange Council. Illinois is 30th.
I can’t imagine how cutting $400 million dollars from higher education funding is helpful to climbing the educational rankings. Maybe it has to do with that trickle down economics that we hear about all of the time. That seems to be working okay, right?
The bottom line is that Illinois politicians, both Republicans and Democrats, are trying to fix the budget by eliminating the one thing that could sustain the state in the future — education. More funding for schools leads to better students which should theoretically lead to better home grown businesses.