University of Illinois Nurses Wounds, Hopes to Heal

How, if at all, does Illinois budget dysfunction and uncertainty affect major state institutions? I took a look at my alma mater, the University of Illinois.

With 80,000 students on three campuses, a $5.6 billion budget, 25,000 employees and 750,000 alumni, the U. of I. is a big deal.

A quick glance at U.S. News rankings of graduate school departments shows UI-Urbana in the top ten in the nation in many fields, for example: computer science (5th); civil engineering (2); materials engineering (4); chemistry (6); physics (9), and so on.

But there has been erosion in recent years. Two decades ago, U.I.’s College of Engineering ranked 3rd best in the country; now it ranks 7th.

Rankings are imperfect, yet academics and parents use them as a rule-of-thumb starting point.

And the competition to move up in the rankings, which means more research dollars and better students, is brutal.

Unfortunately, the University of Illinois brand has been damaged in recent years by self-inflicted wounds from a revolving-door leadership combined with state budget cuts over the past decade and, even more dire, by zero state funding during all of fiscal 2016, which creates uncertainty about the future, to put it mildly.

There has also been a sharp spike in tuition in recent years, which has made it possible for enrollment-hungry universities in neighboring states to undercut the U.I. tuition and poach many of our best students.

Friends of mine in the suburbs tell me their youngsters have in many cases downgraded the Urbana campus from desirable to maybe an acceptable back-up choice.

And the damage to the graduate research programs has been “devastating,” according to a distinguished scientist in Urbana.

The rankings I cite above are based not on its undergraduate teaching excellence but on the academic, especially scientific, contributions made to the world by its faculty and their advanced students.

I talked with a nationally known chemist on the Urbana campus who said his department just lost one of its very best young faculty to Michigan, and he said you could ditto that for a string of faculty, both young and distinguished, in the sciences and engineering.

“Chemistry (at Urbana) made four assistant professor offers in the past year,” he pointed out, “and they all turned us down. That’s unheard of for a top department like ours.”

The chemist noted that scientists go into university teaching and research not for the money (“I was offered twice as much by industry”) but for the security and stability of a setting for exciting long-term research.

“Take that security away, and you have a disaster.”

The vultures are hovering overhead. I can only imagine the bad-mouthing of the U.I. by faculty chairs at peer institutions.

David Dodds Henry was president of the U.I from 1955-71, who doubled the size of the Big U in his tenure.

“It takes decades to build a great university,” said Henry, if I recall correctly, “but it can all be torn down in short order.”

A space scientist with strong academic management credentials, Timothy Killeen has been U.I. president for more than a year.

Killeen is upbeat about the future, as he has to be. He gave me a new strategic plan for the university. The document is heavy on feel-good goals, but light on how to achieve them.

Killeen has frozen tuition and helped create a U.I. caucus of alumni lawmakers.

Re-burnishing the U.I. brand will take university-state government collaboration to re-establish fiscal stability, streamline what my inside sources say is a bloated operation, and protect the diamonds in science and engineering for long-term distinction.

I propose that governor and lawmakers create a truly blue-ribbon commission on the future of higher education in our state. The last such panel, in the 1950s, gave us a strong system, from community colleges to research universities.

Illinois state government simply doesn’t know where it is going, especially so in higher ed.        

Second, lawmakers should make it possible for the governor to appoint to university governing boards distinguished alumni who live out of state, as most do.

For the U.I. board, I think of the likes of Marc Andreesen, who basically created the Internet web browser when a student at Urbana, and polymath Thomas Siebel, who has already contributed $40 million to the U.I.

The university’s wounds are deep but not fatal. The big question is: Do we want a full recovery to the greatness that I fear is slipping away?