Illinois legislators have approved a bill that would restrict the use of search firms to fill vacancies at public universities, but the measure backs away from earlier proposals that would have banned the increasingly popular practice entirely.
The amended bill, which passed the Illinois House of Representatives and the State Senate this week, would allow universities to contract with search firms to help fill presidential vacancies, but it would limit their use in other cases. Before employing outside consultants to aid in nonpresidential searches, a university and its board of trustees would have to “demonstrate a justifiable need for guidance from an individual or firm with specific expertise in the field of the hiring.” The bill would require the state’s public institutions to enact policies that define the criteria for when hiring a search firm is necessary.
The bill, HB 5914, will next be sent to the governor, who is reviewing the legislation, his spokesperson said Wednesday.
The University of Illinois objected to earlier versions of the bill that featured a complete ban on outside search consultants, arguing that such a prohibition would impede its ability to compete for well-qualified candidates. Over the past several months, the university has sought to persuade the legislation’s sponsors to relax the language in the bill.
“We’re satisfied with the way it worked out,” said Thomas P. Hardy, the university’s executive director for university relations. “The effect is that we’ll still have the ability to tap into expert consultants when we feel it’s necessary.”
Mr. Hardy said the university would probably end up spending less money on search firms and hiring them less frequently, in part because the legislation would require the university to prove the necessity of a search firm in each case. The university will continue to employ hiring consultants, he said, but “we’ll be taking a very careful look before doing so.”
Over the past nine fiscal years, the University of Illinois has paid $5.6-million to 23 search firms. But those figures were largely driven by an “anomalous” amount of turnover in high-level positions, Mr. Hardy said, and they will very likely decrease in the next few years.
The original bill to ban the use of search firms was filed in February by State Rep. Chapin Rose, a Republican, who said that search firms may be “nice but they’re not necessary.” He and other supporters of the ban argued that paying consultants to find candidates for vacant positions is a poor use of taxpayers’ money and tuition revenue. They also said that the practice had seeped too low down the administrative hierarchy, citing news reports that Illinois hired multiple firms to help select new deans of colleges, and in one case, an associate director of housing.
An earlier version of the bill also took specific aim at some of the perks that the system’s departing president, Michael J. Hogan, has received, explicitly prohibiting the use of “life coaches, executive counselors, or similar individuals or groups.” That language was also dropped from the final version of the legislation.