A native Iowan named Michael Hogan has just been named the new president of the University of Illinois, replacing the ill-starred B. Joseph White, who was driven from office by an over-blown furor over admissions. Hogan will need a lot of luck and the hide of a rhino, for reasons that the dust-up over Joe White made clear.
Hogan's jurisdiction includes the three U of I campuses in Champaign-Urbana, Chicago and Springfield. But the problems he faces affect every state university in the Midwest. They are short-term and long-term both, and the solutions include both some tactical cost-cutting now and a total strategic rethinking of the relationship between the university and its state.
Basically, at a time when higher education is more vital than ever, each Midwestern state is cheaping out its universities. If Hogan's struggles are shared by other university presidents, the sheer outrageousness of Illinois politics guarantees that the spotlight will shine particularly on his success or failure.
Hogan's short-term problem involves the fact that the state's checks to its flagship university are bouncing like basketballs at Champaign's Assembly Hall. Of the roughly $760 million that the state has budgeted for the university, $375 million, or about half, is still owed, and is nowhere in sight: already, faculty are taking unpaid furloughs, and other money-saving measures are likely. The cause lies in the state government's chaotic finances -- Springfield is stiffing creditors everywhere who rely on it for support. An end to the recession will ease this problem but won't end it.
The long-term problem is more serious. This is the decline in state support of the university that bears its name. This has been going on for years. It's also going on in every other Midwestern state. And it raises a crucial question: if Illinois and other states no longer support their universities, just what do these universities owe their states and students from those states?
Already, there's talk of the "privatization of public education." That talk is going to get louder.
The deal between these states and their universities was struck in 1862, when Abraham Lincoln signed the Morrill Land-Grant Act into law. Under this law, state-owned land was given to universities to educate the youth of the states. Under this bargain, states supported their universities and the universities agreed to both educate the state’s children and do research to help build the economies of the states.
It was a terrific bargain. Over the following decades, big American state universities bloomed into bastions of public education that were the envy of the world. Most of these universities remain academic citadels, but their former dominance is fading.
What’s happening now threatens their very future.
Not so long ago, the states paid half or more of the universities’ operating expenses. Now that share is down to only 20 percent – less in many places – and falling fast. The state of Michigan, for instance, pays only 7 percent of the operating expenses for the school in Ann Arbor. If Michigan’s future depends on education, Michigan may have no future.
James Duderstadt, a former Michigan president, told me that his state has “evolved from a state-supported to a state-assisted to a state-located to a state-harassed university.” Illinois’ Hogan is about to find out what he meant.
As recently as 1980, the state of Illinois paid 44.5 percent of the operating expenses at the U of I. By 2003, this had fallen to 23.8 percent. This year, it’s only 16.4 percent. Next year it will be less – and there’s no guarantee, as we’ve seen, that the state will have enough money to pay even that share.
(The state also pays another amount, equal to 14.6 percent of the budget, into a fund called “payments on behalf.” But this sum goes entirely for pensions and other benefits. It’s been going up, mostly because the state’s pension fund is so woefully underfunded. But it can’t be used for classrooms or faculty or research – in short, for education. This is why faculty are already being forced to take unpaid furloughs, with more cuts to come.)
If the universities are to pay the bills, they have to find money somewhere. One obvious source is higher tuition, which has been going up by the year. Another is fund-raising from alumni and other donors – not exactly an easy task in a recession. A third way, and the probable real wave of the future, is a growth in contracts to do research for private industry.
State legislators, having created the crisis, seem determined to block any solution. Any tuition increase is met by screams from parents and their representatives in Springfield. When former president White tried to raise the 10 percent limit on out-of-state students, legislative protests forced him to back down. (Michigan’s out-of-state enrollment is 40 percent, who pay the higher non-resident tuition, which goes a long way toward patching that schools’ budget.)
When scholars talk about the “privatization of public education,” this is what they mean. Once states considered universities an asset for those states and supported them. Now they don’t, so universities have to find ways to support themselves that have nothing to do with that original land-grant mission.
Joe White, who by all accounts was a fine president, got caught in a scandal – front-paged for weeks by the Chicago Tribune – about a secret admission system that allowed substandard but politically connected students to enroll at the U of I. At private universities, such well-connected students are called “legacies” and are routinely admitted over more qualified students. The U of I under White, in other words, was behaving like the private university that it very nearly is. Critics fumed that White’s actions kept deserving Illinois students from going to college, even though the parents of those students have long since stopped supporting the school that they expect to educate their children.
The resulting political storm forced White out of office, but it didn’t solve any problems, which have now been inherited by Michael Hogan.
(The Tribune greeted Hogan with an editorial (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-edit-university-20100513,0,2412386.story) telling him that his main job as president is to keep Illinois' politicians at bay. Poor Hogan probably thought his main job was to educate the students enrolled on his three campuses. But so long as the dysfunctional relationship between states and their universities lasts, this political problem -- or at least the sniping that goes with it -- remain in his job description.)
Joe White may have seen this coming. In a conversation before his political troubles began, he told me that “the idea (behind the Land Grant Act) was that you can’t build a democracy or an economy without educated people. But now states are backing away. They’re backing away from public universities. We don’t believe in public goods in America any more. We believe in user fees.”
Education made America “a rich family,” he said. “Now we’re a rich family that’s doing a horrible job of preparing our kids to enable us to remain a rich family.”
Something’s got to give, and it’s pretty clear what that something is. I wrote in a recent blog (Olden Gophers, on April 28) on proposals at the Universities of Minnesota and Iowa to chop courses and whole departments who aren’t paying their way. Similar committees are meeting quietly at the three Illinois campuses. There’s no reason why weaker programs can’t be merged into stronger programs in universities in other states – no reason, that is, beyond the protests of faculty who may lose jobs, or legislators demanding that their universities remain full-service schools but refuse to allocate the money to pay their bills.
Hogan, the new Illinois president, comes from the University of Connecticut, where he had a reputation as a good fund-raiser. Under the circumstances, this seems a useful talent.
For more information on education issues in the Midwest, visit the In the News section of the Global Midwest Web site.
It seems like this is a microcosm of modern American and also to a lesser extent European statism. Similar things are going on with our public transit systems where the state cannot afford funding but mandates route systems and pay and pension benefits that can never pay for themselves. (The classic Asian examples of prudent investments in Singapore for example developed when the city state had very little money)
The government does not have the funds or the will to make the choices to keep these institutions funded or viable, yet it still wants to control them in a way that prevents them from operating independently.
I think a huge problem in the Midwest, goes back to he fundamental structure and location of the schools.
If one wanted to create a school that minimized it's costs while maximizing it's value to students and the broader economy, one likely would have located most of these schools closer in towards a big urban area where fewer kids would need to live in dorms, continuing education would be simple and relationships with businesses would be easier.
Interestingly, we see that model in the privately funded schools financed by industrialists in the east like Pratt Institute, Cooper Union and Pittsburgh's Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie Mellon)The University of Chicago also fits that mold.
These were modest investment/ high return schools. The big ten model is about maximum investment for low returns.
None of the schools I mentioned needs a big time sports program and neither does NYU, the most applied to school in the country. Big Ten schools need all this stuff just to keep kids from going crazy in the boring cornfield places they are located. (while the removal of the schools robs the cities of vitality and great potential resources)
The University of Illinois should obviously have it's main campus in the Chicago area. Sooner or later, I will bet this is going to happen.
Posted by: John Morris | Friday, June 18, 2010 at 04:58 AM