Skip to content
ADVERTISEMENT
Sign In
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Virtual Events
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
  • More
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Virtual Events
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
    Upcoming Events:
    An AI-Driven Work Force
    AI and Microcredentials
Sign In
The States

As Illinois Budget Impasse Ends, So Does a ‘Nightmare of Total Uncertainty’ for Its Public Colleges

By Sarah Brown July 6, 2017
The state has its first budget in more than two years, and campus leaders are excited to move forward, even though not all the long-term effects of the budget crisis are yet known.
The state has its first budget in more than two years, and campus leaders are excited to move forward, even though not all the long-term effects of the budget crisis are yet known.iStock

College officials in Illinois breathed a sigh of relief on Thursday as a historic state-budget standoff came to a dramatic end. By a margin of three votes, the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives successfully overrode Gov. Bruce V. Rauner’s veto of a spending bill for the 2018 fiscal year, giving Illinois its first budget in more than two years.

To continue reading for FREE, please sign in.

Sign In

Or subscribe now to read with unlimited access for as low as $10/month.

Don’t have an account? Sign up now.

A free account provides you access to a limited number of free articles each month, plus newsletters, job postings, salary data, and exclusive store discounts.

Sign Up

The state has its first budget in more than two years, and campus leaders are excited to move forward, even though not all the long-term effects of the budget crisis are yet known.
The state has its first budget in more than two years, and campus leaders are excited to move forward, even though not all the long-term effects of the budget crisis are yet known.iStock

College officials in Illinois breathed a sigh of relief on Thursday as a historic state-budget standoff came to a dramatic end. By a margin of three votes, the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives successfully overrode Gov. Bruce V. Rauner’s veto of a spending bill for the 2018 fiscal year, giving Illinois its first budget in more than two years.

What remains to be seen is the long-term damage colleges might face, in terms of institutional problems and reputational harm.

The stalemate — which pitted Democratic lawmakers against Mr. Rauner, a Republican who refused to approve a budget that didn’t include significant spending cuts — has hit higher education hard. For one nearly 10-month period, colleges didn’t receive any state money. Stopgap measures provided some relief, but nothing near the level of state funding colleges were used to receiving.

That forced institutions to cobble together cash reserves, lay off faculty and staff members, mandate furloughs, freeze hiring, and limit university-sponsored travel.

Now that there is a budget, campus leaders say they’re excited to move forward from months of uncertainty and plan for the future. For many colleges, however, a lot of damage has already been done.

Chicago State University was on the brink of shutting down in the spring of 2016 and enrolled just 86 freshmen last fall. Eastern Illinois University also faced rumors of closure and has lost hundreds of employees through layoffs and attrition.

Western Illinois University has laid off faculty and staff members, including two newly tenured professors. Most community colleges made cuts to academic programs and were unable to continue footing the bill for a low-income grant program, known as MAP, that’s usually funded by the state, forcing some students to drop out.

What remains to be seen is the long-term damage Illinois’s colleges might face, both in terms of institutional problems and reputational harm across the state and nation.

The Chronicle spoke with three college presidents — one from a large university system, one from a regional college, and one from a community college — to get a sense of the possible lasting effects of the budget crisis.

University of Illinois System

The University of Illinois system’s three universities have weathered the budget storm better than most of the state’s public colleges.

Two of the institutions — the Urbana-Champaign flagship and the University of Illinois at Chicago — are research universities with large student populations and a diverse set of funding sources. Thirteen to 14 percent of the system’s operating budget comes from the state, a share noticeably less than that of most regional campuses and community colleges. (The system’s 2018 state funding will be 10 percent less than it was in 2015, the last year Illinois had a permanent budget.)

ADVERTISEMENT

The system is down about 400 full-time-equivalent administrative staff, “which has stretched us relatively thin,” says Timothy L. Killeen, the system’s president. But no faculty members have been laid off, and in-state tuition has remained flat.

All three universities have strategically increased enrollment over the last couple of years, Mr. Killeen says. Those efforts came partly in response to financial concerns, he says, though the system’s ultimate goal is ensuring that more Illinois high-school students stay in state for college.

“It does feel like we’ve had our hands pinned behind us,” he says. “But we’ve done a lot in the meantime to strengthen ourselves.”

He remains concerned about faculty recruitment and retention. Seventy professors left the flagship campus during the 2015-16 academic year, a 59 percent increase from the previous year. Now, with a budget on the books, Mr. Killeen says, “we’re going to go into recruitment overdrive mode.”

ADVERTISEMENT

The legislative dysfunction has prompted the university system to reflect deeply on its relationship with the state, he says. For the past 18 months, the president has been pushing a “compact” between the system and the legislature, which he hopes will become a model for university-legislative relations.

We are the solution, not the problem.

Lawmakers would agree to guarantee state-funding levels for the University of Illinois over a five-year period, as well as to create a faculty recruitment and retention fund and scale back a handful of regulations. In exchange, the three campuses would agree to meet performance goals in areas like student retention and graduation, to limit future tuition increases, and to admit more in-state and underrepresented minority students. Mr. Killeen says the bill has about two-dozen sponsors, both Republicans and Democrats.

His message to lawmakers is simple: If the state wants to get back on track economically, it can’t leave its colleges floundering in another two-year financial drought. “We are the solution,” he says, “not the problem.”

Governors State University

Back in May, the Governors State Board of Trustees gave Elaine P. Maimon, the president, the authority to shutter one of the university’s four academic colleges if no more state funding came through this summer. “Thank goodness we don’t have to do that,” Ms. Maimon says.

ADVERTISEMENT

Since 2015, her institution has had to cut 62 positions and eliminate 35 academic programs. In March, the board approved a 15 percent tuition hike. And those changes are here to stay, she says, even though there’s now a permanent budget.

Though the new state budget includes a 10-percent cut to the funding the public-regional university received in 2015, Ms. Maimon says she’s just glad to be “out of this nightmare of total uncertainty.”

In the 2016 fiscal year, her campus received 30 percent of its 2015 state funding. In 2017, it received about 50 percent of it. (The new budget gives colleges some additional money to help close the 2017 gap.)

Our biggest competitor is ‘nowhere.’ We didn’t want our students to give up and just decide, ‘Higher education is not for me.’

Instead of being able to think creatively about how to improve student outcomes, “so much of our energy had to be siphoned off on kind of basic survival,” she says. “Everybody loses when that happens.”

ADVERTISEMENT

Despite tight finances, Governors State made sure that its students wouldn’t be on the hook for paying back their MAP grants, which was the case at some Illinois colleges. About one-third of the university’s undergraduate students are eligible for the aid, and many of them are also first-generation students.

“With our students, our biggest competitor is ‘nowhere,’” Ms. Maimon says. “We didn’t want our students to give up and just decide, ‘Higher education is not for me.’” Their efforts have paid off, she says: Governors State’s enrollment has held steady during the impasse.

She has particularly high praise for the role student leaders have played recently in advocating for the university. Justin Smith, the student senate president, actually wrote a song for the occasion titled “If We Had a Budget,” which a student performed at a campus forum, she says.

“The way our student government and student senate have organized in a civil way to tell the story of the importance of higher education has just been amazing,” she says.

Kankakee Community College

The list of casualties from the impasse at Kankakee Community College is long: The child-care center. A small-business development center. The campus public radio station. Several adult-education facilities. Eighty faculty and staff positions.

ADVERTISEMENT

The college was used to receiving about 30 percent of its operating budget from the state, says John Avendano, Kankakee’s president.

Rainy-day reserves helped alleviate some of the pain, but those funds “weren’t there for typhoons,” says Mr. Avendano, who is also president of the Illinois Council of Community College Presidents. Plus, when MAP grant funding didn’t come through right away, that meant lost tuition dollars too, he adds.

Community colleges are not going anywhere. We’re going to be here. We’re resilient.’

Kankakee couldn’t pay for the MAP grants out of pocket, he says. Its foundation filled some of the gaps for needy students. But the college’s enrollment has dropped significantly since 2015, and other students are taking fewer credit hours, he says, suggesting that the loss of financial aid and the budget uncertainty affected many students. Kankakee’s enrollment has decreased by more than one-third since 2012.

ADVERTISEMENT

“You don’t want to start something if you don’t know whether you can finish it,” Mr. Avendano says.

Even with a new budget, the college won’t be reopening shuttered centers or adding back staff positions at this point, the president says.

Public colleges must adapt to the reality that they will need to operate differently in the future and rely less on the state, Mr. Avendano says. Campus consolidations and closures could be on the horizon in the next five to seven years, he says.

Still, he stresses that he’s grateful to lawmakers for ending the impasse and that he’s bullish on the future of public higher education in Illinois. “Community colleges are not going anywhere,” he says. “We’re going to be here. We’re resilient.”

ADVERTISEMENT

Sarah Brown writes about a range of higher-education topics, including sexual assault, race on campus, and Greek life. Follow her on Twitter @Brown_e_Points, or email her at sarah.brown@chronicle.com.

Correction (7/2/2018, 6:03 p.m.): This article originally misreported that more than 100 Western Illinois faculty members were laid off during the state’s budget crisis. There were layoffs, but the exact number is difficult to establish with certainty, as some announced layoffs were never carried out, and other people laid off were later restored to their positions. The article has been reworded accordingly.

A version of this article appeared in the July 21, 2017, issue.
We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.
Tags
Finance & Operations First-Generation Students
Share
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Email
SarahBrown2024
About the Author
Sarah Brown
Sarah Brown is The Chronicle’s news editor. Follow her on Twitter @Brown_e_Points, or email her at sarah.brown@chronicle.com.
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT

Related Content

2 Illinois Professors Were Laid Off. Then They Got Tenure. Now What?
For Illinois’s Public Colleges, No State Money Means Plenty of Pain
Public Regional Colleges Never Die. Can They Be Saved?
Where Does the Regional State University Go From Here?

More News

Photo illustration showing Santa Ono seated, places small in the corner of a dark space
'Unrelentingly Sad'
Santa Ono Wanted a Presidency. He Became a Pariah.
Illustration of a rushing crowd carrying HSI letters
Seeking precedent
Funding for Hispanic-Serving Institutions Is Discriminatory and Unconstitutional, Lawsuit Argues
Photo-based illustration of scissors cutting through paper that is a photo of an idyllic liberal arts college campus on one side and money on the other
Finance
Small Colleges Are Banding Together Against a Higher Endowment Tax. This Is Why.
Pano Kanelos, founding president of the U. of Austin.
Q&A
One Year In, What Has ‘the Anti-Harvard’ University Accomplished?

From The Review

Photo- and type-based illustration depicting the acronym AAUP with the second A as the arrow of a compass and facing not north but southeast.
The Review | Essay
The Unraveling of the AAUP
By Matthew W. Finkin
Photo-based illustration of the Capitol building dome propped on a stick attached to a string, like a trap.
The Review | Opinion
Colleges Can’t Trust the Federal Government. What Now?
By Brian Rosenberg
Illustration of an unequal sign in black on a white background
The Review | Essay
What Is Replacing DEI? Racism.
By Richard Amesbury

Upcoming Events

Plain_Acuity_DurableSkills_VF.png
Why Employers Value ‘Durable’ Skills
Warwick_Leadership_Javi.png
University Transformation: a Global Leadership Perspective
  • Explore Content
    • Latest News
    • Newsletters
    • Letters
    • Free Reports and Guides
    • Professional Development
    • Virtual Events
    • Chronicle Store
    • Chronicle Intelligence
    • Jobs in Higher Education
    • Post a Job
  • Know The Chronicle
    • About Us
    • Vision, Mission, Values
    • DEI at The Chronicle
    • Write for Us
    • Work at The Chronicle
    • Our Reporting Process
    • Advertise With Us
    • Brand Studio
    • Accessibility Statement
  • Account and Access
    • Manage Your Account
    • Manage Newsletters
    • Individual Subscriptions
    • Group and Institutional Access
    • Subscription & Account FAQ
  • Get Support
    • Contact Us
    • Reprints & Permissions
    • User Agreement
    • Terms and Conditions
    • Privacy Policy
    • California Privacy Policy
    • Do Not Sell My Personal Information
1255 23rd Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20037
© 2025 The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Chronicle of Higher Education is academe’s most trusted resource for independent journalism, career development, and forward-looking intelligence. Our readers lead, teach, learn, and innovate with insights from The Chronicle.
Follow Us
  • twitter
  • instagram
  • youtube
  • facebook
  • linkedin