As someone who has spent their career in both policy and higher education, and as a current trustee for Western Illinois University, I have sadly witnessed the erosion of state support for regional universities.
In fact, the western region of Illinois isn’t known as “Forgotonia” for no reason. Illinois has over time morphed into a public higher education system of inadequate, inequitable and unstable funding of our vital regional universities. Assuming there is accountability and affordability criteria from the universities, the time is now for equitable funding of our public colleges.
Today there is no logical, data-driven formula for distributing funds and no factoring of actual costs to adequately support students. Funding decisions are driven largely by political negotiations, and the recent paltry one or two percent across-the-board increases only serve to bake in historical disparities.
Illinois has disinvested in public higher education with no regional university having more than half of what it needs to serve its students. This imbalance has forced institutions to shift costs to students, parents and families, with students left to pay tuition and fees that are almost 50 percent higher than the national average.
Disinvestment in the 2010s resulted in Illinois having the largest enrollment declines, and these were mostly at our regional universities. The disinvestment and inequitable distribution hurts minority and rural students most of all. Increased funding boosts enrollment, results in less time to obtain a degree, and significantly increases graduation rates for Black, Latinx and rural students.
Importantly, a groundbreaking model for equity and adequacy is pending in the General Assembly. In a state budget of $54 billion, the approximate $135M investment called for by SB13/HB1581 represents just three-tenths of 1 percent! Funding our public universities as written in the legislation is estimated to produce thousands of additional graduates who are more likely to remain in Illinois to begin productive lives and careers that may generate millions of additional dollars in state tax revenue and reductions in Medicaid and SNAP—tremendous statewide benefits that require a mere drop in the bucket of Illinois’ total budget. The scale of opportunity presented by SB13/HB1581 not only warrants, but necessitates, the investment.
Illinois’ regional universities produce critical public servants including teachers and nursing graduates in larger numbers than other schools. In Western Illinois University’s case, it is second in the nation for producing professional, highly trained law enforcement graduates. The harm of not enacting the Adequate and Equitable Public University Funding Formula Act is immense, costing not just dollars, but the much-needed trained professionals who will continue leaving our communities for other states.
Illinois is at a tipping point. In the final weeks of session, our legislators must consider the role they play in shaping the future of our universities, particularly that of our regional institutions that serve students and communities who sadly have felt forgotten.
I fervently hope our lawmakers use their agency to stand with students in Illinois by supporting the passage of SB13/HB1581.
Kirk Dillard is the former chief
of staff to the late Gov. Jim Edgar,
a former state senator representing
Illinois’ western suburbs, a former
staffer to the Senate Higher Education
Committee, and a former student trustee
on the Western Illinois University
Board of Governors. He is currently
a trustee for Western Illinois U.
