From the New York Times:
Yes, IUIC is increasingly having trouble for attracting in-state students. I’ve been told that the joke is that the UC now stands for University of China. Oddly, attracting fewer in-state students helps them with their budget issues.
I understand that states have to balance their budgets and the administration at UIUC has been quite self-destructive. However, there has to be a way to get a strong administration in place and provide it with a budget that will allow it to maintain the reputation for quality education that has taken forever to build.
The budget cuts in Wisconsin are putting Wiscy at risk too, if not as extremely so as in the UIUC case. The Cal system is also struggling, with class sizes out of control. I recently saw that Berkeley one freshman CS course at there has a listed capacity of over 1,500 students.
Destroying these amazing Universities slowly through bureaucratic bloating, administrative misdeeds and state funding cuts can’t possibly be good for America. If the States can’t fund these schools adequately, then they should be converted to private schools. That may not be the ideal solution, but would be much better than allowing them to slowly crumble and deteriorate.
My S works in the office of mgt and budget for Gov Rauner, with a focus on the education budget. I’m just going to keep my mouth shut :-). Seriously, I’m typically Dem but the Dems have been recalcitrant in being willing to negotiate. This state has serious budget issues and everyone is going to have to feel some pain.
I’m on the Iowa side of the Quad Cities but I work in Illinois and the local news covers both states.
Wisconsin has had budget cuts, but at least the state passed a budget. Illinois has gone months without a budget. They have a heavily Dem legislature and a Repub governor. The legislature recently can’t even agree on a budget to pass up to the governor. (I don’t know all the prior attempts but that’s been the news recently)
Illinois, like Greece, promised a lot of pensions (cough Chicago cough) that they are now having trouble funding.
Article from last year about some of the perks and how the new chancellor of UIC is getting rid of them.
I’ll see and raise your anecdote:
And one of the most popular courses at private (and Ivy) Cornell has over 1,000 students enrolled; some sit in an adjacent lecture hall and watch a video.
In reality, once a class is over a certain size, say 50-75, it really doesn’t matter how big the lecture hall then becomes, as long as plenty of small discussion sections are provided.
Illinois and California are starting to learn that you cannot budget on the basis of a 10% return on pension assets without taking great risk. These two states have the potential to totally collapse. If California reported based on the risk free rate, it is in the hole over $1 trillion.
State government has been dysfunctional in IL for years. It is a big part of the reason we did not consider any IL schools.
Are you talking Universities of California or The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign?
@4kidsdad I meant UIUC. I believe they have more Chinese students than any other university.
His campaign slogan should have been, “Vote Rauner, because a Chinese mind is a terrible thing to waste.”
I’m not sure if the causes of these problems are the same for all states. The results might be the same, however. Wisc seems Walker made cuts to the budge and he essentially got rid of tenure by putting people beholden to him on the board that can get rid of people or departments at will. Illinois I have heard, not sure if it’s true, that the pensions have caused problems with the budget. And in CA a big problem has been lack of tax revenues because of Prop 13. I’m open for anyone to correct me.
@Dustyfeathers So basically, too much spending, not enough taxes, and a smattering of government waste, corruption, and ineptitude would cover all of the states.
Also, paying for past mistakes consumes much of state budgets. Past mistakes include:
- Pension promises made in the past but not funded adequately (using overly optimistic investment rates of return).
- Increased prison spending due to putting more lesser criminals in prison due to “tough [but not smart] on crime” laws enacted during the crime wave (perhaps reducing the amount of prison space available for more dangerous criminals like a high profile sexual penetrator who was recently sentenced to 6 months in jail and 3 years probation).
Pension funds do not invest in risk-free assets, so using the risk-free rate would be unrealistically pessimistic.
My cousin is a prof at one of the affected universities. He is completely dismayed, and honestly is looking for jobs in other state university systems.
Incidentally, when an older cousin attended Cornell in the mid-'90’s and took that very class(Intro Psych class), it was ~1500 students and the lecture hall had to accomodate several television screens so the entire class could see and hear the Prof’s lectures.
IME, there’s a difference in dynamic feel of the lecture class of 50-75, 200-500, and anything over 500. Personally took courses in the former two categories during HS/undergrad summer course…and sat in on a 500+ lecture class at a friend’s large private research U.
The consequences of crazy spending, bloated union pensions and lower tax revenues from businesses and individuals fleeing high tax rates are finally here. I feel sorry for all of those students and staff caught in the budget shortfalls. Residents of Illinois have only themselves to blame, they voted for those policies through their elected representatives.
@TooOld4School, you do know IL’s current and past income tax rates, right?
A lot of graduates from our suburban (of Chicago) public high school are admitted to UIUC with less than stellar stats - Almost all of my D’s friends were, and a couple of them are B- students (but with very good test scores, and they did not apply to impacted majors, I believe).
The problem is, once they’re admitted, they cannot afford to attend.
Middle class families seem to be squeezed out, more and more, from state flagship universities.
The middle class students who do decide to attend take out lots of loans - to attend the state school.
This situation is not just in IL either, from what I understand, but IL does have some of the highest in-state tuition in the country.
So, I can see why UIUC would be flooded with full-pay international students.
If our legislature doesn’t pass a budget by June 30, West Virginia will be in the ditch to keep them company. We don’t have provisions in our laws for state employee layoffs or furloughs, so we’re looking at a complete shutdown. We state employees used to have a modicum of job security - no more! And they actually proposed de-funding a couple of our state universities.
Illinois Resident Cost of Attendance (COA) at UIUC is $30,638-$35,642 (based on major).
At IU-Bloomington it’s $24,808, at UW-Madison it’s $25,242 and at the “pricey” University of Michigan, it’s $27,812 (lower division).
UIUC is making Penn State ($29,440-$32,440) seem reasonable. 