Ahead the start of a new school year, state lawmakers are pushing legislation they say will make college more accessible for Illinoisans.
Flanked by fellow Democratic lawmakers, Senate Majority Leader Kimberly A. Lightford, D-Maywood, and Rep. Carol Ammons, D-Urbana, unveiled Senate Bill 3965 — creating a new funding formula for public universities in Illinois — during a July 30 press conference.
The legislation comes on the heels of a report from the Illinois Commission on Equitable Public University Funding which found the state needs to increase funding to universities by approximately $1.4 billion in current dollars to meet student needs. Both Lightford and Ammons serve as co-chairs of the commission.
“As the commission did its work, it became clear that the state’s current funding system is broken,” said Lightford, a member of the Illinois Senate Higher Education Committee, during the press conference held in Chicago. “It does not consider student needs or universities realities or state priorities.”
As it is currently written, the bill puts the timeline for meeting that $1.4 billion gap and fully funding public universities within the next 10 to 15 years. The state would invest an additional $135 million per fiscal year if it commits to doing so in the next decade.
More: Illinois State Fairgrounds looks ‘better than it’s looked in decades’, official says
What has placed state universities in this predicament is a host of reasons.
For starters, inflation-adjusted state funding dropped by 22%, or by $528 million, between fiscal years 2015 and 2023. This in-turn has made colleges more reliant on tuition and fees, making up 65% of their revenues, but overall enrollment has dropped. Lightford said there are 15,000 less students enrolled in public universities since 2012, this drop particularly seen among Black students and lower income families.
Despite deriving much of its funding from tuition, the University of Illinois Board of Trustees voted to approve a plan in January freezing undergraduate tuition at $313.50 per credit hour and graduate tuition at $332.25 per hour for the 2024-2025 academic year. Overall, however, tuition and fees at the state’s 12 public universities increased by 115% on average between 2000 and 2021 per the report.
The lack of funding has placed schools like Northern Illinois University in a precarious position, president Lisa Freeman said. Based in DeKalb, the university enrolls more than 15,000 undergraduate and graduate students.
“Our public universities cannot continue down this path without risking our ability to recruit new students and risking deterioration of the high-level learning experiences that our students need,” she said.
The FY25 budget Gov. JB Pritzker signed into law includes increased higher education investment, namely a $30.6 million increase in public university funding from the prior fiscal year and another $10 million jump in Monetary Award Program grants. His administration has increased MAP funding by $711 million over the past six years, according to the governor’s office.
More: New Illinois budget invests heavily in education. Why do some say it’s not enough?
Pritzker, simultaneously, is facing increasing pressure from Chicago Public Schools to meet a $1.1 billion budget shortfall. The Chicago Teachers Union rallied at the Illinois State Capitol this Spring demanding more funding through the state’s Evidence-Based Formula for public K-12 schools. The governor has been steadfast that the $350 million, $50 million above the minimum, allocated in recent budgets is sufficient.
Still, he is open to further spending.
“We’re taking every resource that’s available to us for education and putting it there. So I know that there are people who would like more, I’m one of them, and so let’s go do that,” Pritzker said at an unrelated press conference in Chicago on Monday. “But that is not something that can happen immediately during their negotiation.”
Lightford said SB 3965 is still in the early stages, but the goal is to work on the legislation in coming months for it to be ready for the fall veto session. Lawmakers return to Springfield for six days between Nov. 12 and Nov. 21.
Contact Patrick M. Keck: pkeck@gannett.com, twitter.com/@pkeckreporter.
Source link : http://www.bing.com/news/apiclick.aspx?ref=FexRss&aid=&tid=66b1ebeb9543486da6fb8382dfbdec55&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.usatoday.com%2Fstory%2Fnews%2Feducation%2F2024%2F07%2F31%2Fillinois-underfunds-public-universities-by-1-4-billion-report-finds%2F74603147007%2F&c=14181356235816835984&mkt=en-us
Author :
Publish date : 2024-07-30 22:48:00
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.