wiu712 wrote: Sat Jun 16, 2018 12:30 pm
The WIUM-FM News report that mentioned the possibilities of Furloughs and/or Layoffs at Western caught a lot of people off-guard and sent shock waves through the community. It has been the main topic of conversation everywhere that I have been.
My co-workers at the SIU Med School told me that they are hearing lots of chatter about a re-organizing of the state universities next year regardless of who wins as Governor.
Governor Rauner was at the Western-Quad Cities campus a few days ago. He made some vague references about the need for change while addressing concerns over declining enrollments at Illinois colleges and universities.
"We’ve had enrollment shrinkage at many higher-education institutions in Illinois in recent years," he said. "But, frankly, this has been going on for decades. We’ve been losing students, and many of our universities have had shrinking enrollments.
"This is a challenge we need to take on by getting the mandate relief on our schools, getting more state support but bringing down the cost structure," he said.
Some state universities overlap each other, offering the same degrees for the same programs, he said. Some schools do it more cost-efficiently than others.
"So we need to have a rationalization across the state university system, so some focus on areas of education for themselves that may be different than other campuses," he said.
Prior to 1995, there were three operating systems for the state's 12 public universities:
University of Illinois system.
Board of Regents.
Board of Governors.
Western was a part of the Board of Governors.
In 1995, Governor Jim Edgar gave each state university its own separate Board of Trustees. So today, Illinois has nine separate BOT's instead of the original three.
jc