Western Illinois University is the most underfunded public university in Illinois.
According to Advance Illinois, WIU currently gets less than half the state funding needed to serve its students. The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, however, is funded at nearly 90% adequacy.
The gap is no accident, but the result of a funding system that has never been based on equity or student need, but only on political momentum and flat percentage increases applied equally to the well-funded and the underfunded alike.
Senate Bill 13 and House Bill 158, the Adequate and Equitable Public University Funding Act, would change this. The bill would direct new funding to the universities furthest from adequacy first.
For WIU, that means a potential increase from $16,000 per student to $35,000 — a genuine investment in an institution that serves first-generation students, veterans, and rural communities that larger universities do not.
The cost is $135 million annually — less than one-quarter of one percent of a $56 billion state budget. The University of Illinois system has opposed the bill, citing its own budget priorities.
But as WIU Trustee Kirk Dillard noted, a degree today is worth 85% more over a lifetime than one earned in 1979. Why wouldn’t Illinois invest $135 million to keep that opportunity accessible?
For 23 years, regardless of the party holding the governor’s office, state funding for higher education has declined.
WIU has made difficult cuts and survived. But survival is not the same as thriving. Springfield must pass this bill now.
Merrill Cole, professor of English and president, WIU Chapter, University Professionals of Illinois
This article originally appeared on Rockford Register Star: Springfield must pass Public University Funding Act | Letter
Reporting by Merrill Cole, Special to the McDonough County Voice / Rockford Register Star
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