Illinois higher education crisis at tipping point

Joe McLean, a laid-off EIU office manager and AFSCME member, tells his story.  PHOTO: Ryan Keith

AFSCME university members were part of a news conference held by the Illinois Coalition to Invest in Higher Education in Springfield on June 28 to call for full funding of higher education for FY 16 and FY 17 now, and with none of Gov. Rauner’s harmful poison-pill demands.

Most state-funded higher-education institutions have gone a year with less than a third of expected state funds. As Illinois fumbles toward July 1—the day marking the start of a second new fiscal year without a state budget in place—our state universities, students, staff and faculty are suffering.

Layoffs, furloughs and program cuts have hit every campus. Students struggle without financial assistance, employee health claims aren’t being paid and enrollment is down. And after a year in which our universities received only pennies on the dollar of their promised state funding—and that not until April—now there’s no guarantee of a single cent from the state in the new fiscal year.

At the news conference, Joe McLean—a laid-off office manager and AFSCME member from Eastern Illinois University—told reporters of the devastating impact of Gov. Rauner’s refusal to develop and sign a budget. Joe’s story put a real, human face on the painful consequences for staff.

“Just a few years ago life seemed perfect when we purchased a home near EIU,” he said. “But now I have lost my job, and my two girls and I live in fear that my wife could soon also be laid off from EIU. When you consider that I am only one of hundreds of public university employees to be laid off, it is easy to see what a damaging effect this budget impasse is having on our state.”

College towns like EIU are often the largest employer in a region, providing an economic engine for working families and rural communities.

All this hardship, of course, is the consequence of Governor Rauner’s refusal to enact a full-year, fully funded budget unless lawmakers first roll over to his demands for unrelated changes to state law that would strip the rights of working people, drive down wages and lower the standard of living for the Illinois middle class.

Illinois’ higher education crisis has gained national attention. Earlier this month, an instructor from UIUC gained national attention with an op-ed column in the New York Times that said bluntly, “Higher education in Illinois is dying.”

And the blame is being pinned right where it belongs—directly on the governor. A letter to the editor headlined “Rauner is driving faculty, students from Illinois” was published in the June 27 Chicago Sun-Times; it was signed by more than 260 faculty from universities statewide who told Gov. Rauner, “All public servants, whether employed at the university or in state government, have a responsibility to fulfill. We cannot fulfill ours unless you fulfill yours. However we arrived at the current economic crisis, it cannot be bettered when compromise is only viewed as failure, and when precious state resources are used to further a political agenda.”

AFSCME members at state universities are active in the battle to restore urgently needed state funding in local efforts on our campuses and in the statewide coalitions. Last month, hundreds of university employees and retirees joined the “Rauner Is Hurting Illinois” rally at the state capitol.