Illinois public universities are in crisis mode right now due to decade’s worth of declining funding, decreasing enrollment, and now have only received 6 months of funding over the past 22 months. Something has to change to reduce costs and offer better education for Illinois’s students. For that reason, I propose that Illinois universities take a drastic departure from the traditional “high school to 4 year college” model in order to provide a better, more cost effective education for Illinois students.
It is important to understand the two types of 4 year research institutions in Illinois to fully understand the education crisis. The two groups are Illinois Regional Schools, the second group is the University of Illinois System and Illinois State (For simplicity, this second group will be referred to as the U of I System, even though Illinois State is not actually part of the U of I System).
The U of I System is working well right now even with the lack of state funding, this is due to a combination of increasing enrollment, a wealthier student body, and a massive alumni donor base. While the U of I System has felt the sting of lost funding, most cuts have been to future investment not current operations.
The Regional Schools, however, are in turmoil right now, as these schools have seen declining enrollment, continuous cuts to their funding, and have a much smaller alumni base to tap into when times get hard. A lack of state funding is a deathblow to these universities because many of their students cannot afford to pay higher tuition costs, since the Regional Schools typically act as a gateway to the middle class for Illinois’s economically disadvantaged. Because of this, Regional Schools are becoming less accessible to Illinois’s economically disadvantaged, as decreased funding to the universities has forced them to raise tuition, pricing out the very people they are trying to reach.
So, what can be done to fix the regional system, and make it a cost effective option for Illinois residents? My proposal is to combine Illinois community colleges and the Illinois Regional Schools into one massive university system. In doing so, the fundamental education model of the Regional Schools would change. The Regional Schools will no longer act as 4 year schools. They will now only offer classes for juniors and seniors, who have graduated from a community college. Additionally, each school will no longer offer a wide variety of majors, but instead operate within a specific specialty.
The college process for Illinois students would go like this: the student can choose between two public options, either the traditional 4 year route offered by the U of I System, or the specialty route offered by the Regional System. For the specialty route, students must first attend community college. This is a vital part to reforming the university system because it forces Illinois students to take cheaper curses at community colleges. Two years at a community college will always be cheaper than at a research institution, since they don’t need to house or feed students, can hire a less educated faculty, and don’t have to offer athletics, or pay for research.
After their first two years, students are allowed to choose between which region school they want to go to. Each school would have is specialty. For example, Eastern Illinois would specialize in the Natural Sciences, Northeastern would specialize in fine arts, and Western would specialize in political sciences, etc. This would reduce tuition prices for the Regional Schools since it would allow them to reduce the amount of none educational administrative staff, since all new students are being funneled through the community colleges. Tuition would also be cheaper overall because each school would only have to offer a narrow range of majors thus reducing the amount of professors needed to teach at the school. Additionally, this would reduce the number of professors but allow the school to high more qualified professors since each campus would be so specialized.
This new system would certainly reduce tuition costs for students and operational costs for the universities, thus easing the financial stress that the state’s government has put on the universities. While it is unlikely that the education system will be reformed this radically, the situation for Illinois schools is desperate enough that it may be worth looking into.
