“The state’s universities haven’t received funding since 2016. Stopgap funds haven’t been sufficient to delay faculty and staff cuts, along with other reductions at several Illinois campuses.”
I don’t necessarily see this as a serious threat at this point, but . . . we’re from Illinois, and we’re sending DD17 out-of-state for college (and with merit money and Midwest Student Exchange Program discounts, it’s actually much cheaper).
Thanks for posting this, my niece is starting at Illinois State University this Fall. I’ll have to make sure my sister stays on top of this. I would agree that this probably isn’t a serious threat right now but I have been paying attention to the budget issues in Illinois as we are in a boarder state.
Considering that UIUC’s campus is undergoing construction so they can add a joint BioE and Medicine department for grad students, I doubt UIUC is affected all that much.
“UIUC has over $3.3 Billion in Endowment. So not sure if this news impacts them.”
They also have super expensive programs to run (huge engineering school, etc.). If you make commitments assuming a certain funding level, and then there’s a shortfall in the budget, you’re in trouble no matter how rich you are. Most endowments are not liquid, and every dollar is spoken for.
UIUC’s engineering program gets a lot of outside private funding. Like someone mentioned, they are getting $100M in private funding to start a engineering based medical school on campus. UIUC also has tons of wealthy international students who want to attend every year, especially from Asia. I don’t think state budget woes this will impact UIUC too much, but it will have an impact on the regional schools like Western Illinois University.
Husband and son were at UIUC yesterday. Took his 90 year old father, an alum, back to see the campus. After all the talk about how bad things are due to the budget crisis, they were surprised to see how much construction was going on around campus. Said it was an a huge mess, hard to get around, and orange cones were everywhere you looked. So there’s some money coming in from somewhere…have they had a successful capital campaign recently?
Anything that is in the construction process right now was likely paid for years ago – sometimes with loans. It doesn’t tell you much about budget woes right now.