When you don’t have much money, sometimes the difference between staying in college and dropping out really is a bus fare to campus. Or a library that doesn’t close too early. Or a registration process that doesn’t cost you days away from your job.
So it’s heartening to hear from students here at Chicago State University, most of whom come from the poor South Side communities nearby, and are also juggling family responsibilities and jobs they can’t afford to give up, that they appreciate changes a new administration has finally brought to this campus.
A dormitory so rundown that one student said it “was almost like living in a project building” has been repaired. Course calendars have been prepared for semesters beyond the current one, so students can better plan to complete their degrees. There’s even a new shuttle service that takes students directly to the campus from a subway stop several dicey blocks away.
“The grass is green, the trees are trimmed, and the garbage is off the ground,” was the proud assessment from Levon James Jr., a junior, as he walked me through the library, student union, and other landmarks of the 160-acre campus recently.
In neglected urban neighborhoods, the “broken windows” theory says, simple things like picking up the trash and washing away graffiti can help reverse the decline.
Now, with what might be considered the higher-education equivalent—visible improvements like streamlining registration and giving students a safe and quiet place to study by keeping the library open until midnight—Wayne D. Watson, the new president, is looking to kick-start the same effect here, at one of the country’s most troubled urban universities.
Mr. Watson, former chancellor of the City Colleges of Chicago, is no stranger to the bureaucracies of higher education nor to the Byzantine politics of the predominantly black South Side, and of Illinois. Passionate and charismatic, he’s taken some jabs from professors and the local press who question whether his status as a City Hall insider landed him the job. But judging by the many warm hugs and hellos that came his way as we walked across the campus—some from students who knew him at City Colleges and have now transferred here—there’s an abundance of support, or perhaps hope, mixed in with the rancor.
Still, he’s got his work cut out for him.
Years of mismanagement by prior administrations, meddling from the statehouse, and until very recently lackadaisical oversight by trustees have left many academic and financial scars.
And while Chicago State’s travails may be more egregious than most, sadly there are many other public colleges that can trace their failings to some of the same forces.
Here, priority one is the abysmal graduate rate: 16 percent for first-time full-time freshmen in 2007, a figure that ranks as one of the worst in the country even considering that fewer than 10 percent of the university’s 7,200 students fit into that category. The median for 13 of the university’s peers across the country is 37 percent, according to an analysis conducted for the Illinois Board of Higher Education. It’s been terrible for more than a decade.
The problems go on from there. For two years running, the university has been criticized for lousy financial management by state auditors (12 of the problems cited in the audit of the 2008 fiscal year were repeats from 2007). Its enrollment, which topped 10,000 in the mid-1990s, has dropped by more than a quarter. And its accreditor announced in July that it would be conducting an unusual “focused visit” to examine, among other things, concerns about leadership and retention.
It would be easy to assume—and many here and around the country quickly do—that the university’s problems arise from a lack of state support, another example of an urban institution not getting its due. But this institution has fared well by the state, thanks mostly to the former president of the State Senate, Emil Jones Jr., who by all accounts made Chicago State his pet project for new buildings while encouraging hands-off treatment for those seeking to scrutinize its effectiveness.
In fact, the higher-education board’s data show that the proportion of Chicago State’s budget coming from the state is higher than the median for its peers (44 versus 41 percent), while its spending on instruction and services to students also exceeds the median.
Meanwhile, students say their science labs are sub par, roofs leak, and it can take days to get a bill straightened out or to get a student ID card. For students whose lives are already complicated enough, those signs send a message. “You don’t want to go somewhere where you don’t feel welcome,” says Jessica Bolden, a junior.
Mr. Watson, who officially took office October 1 but was consulting on decisions in the months before that, has already begun to attack the many management problems—and what he calls “the lack of an educational focus.”
He’s replaced or filled 10 top administrative posts, including a vice president for administration and finance, a vice president for enrollment management, and the general counsel. He’s also told the deans to establish goals for retention and graduation in their schools and to have their chairs do the same for their departments. And he cracked down on a star professor who had been allowed to teach just one course a year while drawing a full salary. Next up: a study on staffing levels, which will probably show that they’re too high.
What took so long? And where was the board during all of this?
The Rev. Leon D. Finney Jr., a longtime and influential Chicago community organizer who is now chairman of the Board of Trustees, admits that it was probably a year into his tenure before he began to recognize the problems. Once he did, he says, he and the board did take action, declining to renew the contract of the former president, Elnora D. Daniel, (he maintains that her contract made it hard to fire her) and ultimately hiring Mr. Watson. His five-year contract calls for an annual performance review that will examine his progress in improving things like retention, timely graduation, enrollment, and financial management.
“Change is in the wind,” Mr. Finney told me. The students have little choice but to hope he’s right.
“All we have is this campus,” says Raven Curling, a biology and pre-dental student who is also president of the student government. “It feels like we’re a university without university standards.”
Policy wonks and education reformers talk often about the importance of accountability and about the responsibilities of trustees to set and enforce standards. All that jargon moves from abstraction to reality when you see the price students pay for inattention.
