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News >> ................................................................Last updated: 3/22/2010 |
Government denies funds to state universities
Mark Taylor ~ Staff Writer
Seniors attending Illinois’ state universities this fall may face increases in tuition fees as large as 20 percent due to the Illinois government being hundreds of millions of dollars behind in payments to the state’s publicly funded universities.
Presidents of the 13 universities urged Governor Pat Quinn and Comptroller Dan Hynes in a Feb. 9 letter for “commitment to a reliable schedule” for the payment of $735 million owed to the schools as of Jan. 25. Already the universities have “drawn down our available resources” and are “counting on tuition dollars to keep our doors open.”
The tuition hikes, in addition to hiring freezes, pay cuts, and mandatory furlough days for tens of thousands of faculty members are just some of the consequences of Illinois’ massive $13 billion deficit.
As the universities fall further into debt, East graduate and Northern Illinois University sophomore Robert Paterno expects some serious repercussions for both current and incoming students. “I expect some classes will be dropped, as well as teachers getting laid off or forced to take furloughs. If it gets worse, I won’t have classes to attend, and if it gets to the worst the university would be closed,” Paterno said. “[Incoming college students] will probably either go to non-state schools, or have to go to out-of-state schools, putting them into more debt” if the crisis is not solved soon.
At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, sophomore and East graduate Charlie Tan Lim says that for incoming students tuition may be subject to change, rather than being locked in after the first year. Besides the four furlough days professors there are taking this semester, though, he “personally doesn’t think the average university student here really cares; I don’t think they’ve noticed anything besides the furlough days.”
The state currently has a 40 percent shortfall on general revenue funding, according to Illinois House Representative Elaine Nekritz in a phone interview. Nekritz said that in order to cut away at the deficit and reach a position where providing the universities’ funds would be more possible, “We’ll need to go find additional cuts, impose additional efficiencies, or new revenues.”
In his Mar. 10 budget address, Quinn proposed spending cuts for the next fiscal year totaling over $2 billion from the budget, which would include a $1.3 billion cut for public education in the state. Alternatively, he called for a one percent income tax surcharge to “restore our education budget to current levels.”
The University of Illinois has received only $133 million of the $617 million it has billed the state so far this fiscal year, according to a document released on the university’s website. The state currently owes the university $487 million. While it has not been the policy in previous years, the state’s universities are now preparing to take loans in order to keep their doors open.
But the universities’ cuts in spending, tuition hikes, and furlough days, even with a potential income tax hike to fund Illinois public schools, may still not be enough to restore the schools to their financial status before the crisis. “Our hole is so big that even if we raise income taxes, we can’t raise them enough to fill our hole and fully pay our budget,” Nekritz said. “We’re going to have to be smarter in the way we do business.”
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