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High Noon For Higher Education | Alumni Interview | Class Notes Profile

FEATURE STORY (continued) — March/April 2006

High Noon ...

By Jim Dey

The quality of a University of Illinois education led junior Jacob Smallhorn to select the U of I rather than go to a less expensive school. Studio One Photography

"Private fund raising is about adding additional resources to a winning enterprise," he said, estimating the time horizon to make a major impact to be "five years and beyond."

In the meantime, White said the effects of underfunding are reflected in "100 different forms" - from the loss of valuable faculty members to other schools to higher teacher/student ratios to deferred maintenance needs estimated to cost $700 million to $800 million.

"Walk into Lincoln Hall, and you'll see it," he said. "We have to fix it, and we can't wait for the state."

Built in 1911, the largest instructional building on campus has gone 70 years without a major remodeling - and it's not just modern technology that the facility cries out for. The building needs the basics such as new electrical, plumbing and heating systems, with renovation costs estimated at $48 million-plus.

And that's just for starters. Fifty-one percent of the buildings on campus are between 30 and 59 years old and another 22 percent greater than 60.

Those kinds of costs, if left to the U of I to fund internally, mean that students like Jacob Smallhorn, a junior from Charleston, will continue to struggle to pay for his education. Smallhorn estimated that he's running up debt ranging from $3,000 to $5,000 each year.

"We're where the budget problems trickle down," he said.

Nonetheless, Smallhorn is happy to be attending Illinois. He could have enrolled at Eastern Illinois University in his hometown at a substantial savings, but he wanted a UI education.

"It's wonderful that I have the chance to go," he said. "There's tremendous opportunity here."

Smallhorn, who is pursuing a double major in history and political science and plans to attend law school, said he's paying his own way via grants and loans and "whatever I can scrape up in the summer." That can make for a pretty tight budget at times.

"I haven't been able to buy all my books yet for this semester," Smallhorn said a couple of weeks after the spring semester began in January.

It's students like Lale and Smallhorn who concern President White. He notes that while the students from wealthy families can afford whatever tuition is charged and the poor receive substantial financial aid, "what's really at stake here is the middle class."

'One of the most extraordinary inventions of modern times'

While White is willing to increase tuition to some point, the long-term effect of decreased support from the state could "drive up tuition so that the [U of I] looks like private education," he said.

Budget cuts have stalled the renovation of Lincoln Hall, which needs more than $48 million to fix such basics as plumbing and wiring. Stephanie Swift Photo

And that's something White desperately wants to avoid.

"I think great public universities are one of the most extraordinary inventions of modern times," he said.

White is concerned that the middle class may be squeezed out of institutions that have historically served to provide ordinary people the opportunities to do great things - like build the first transistor or Internet browser, become a professional athlete or produce 20 Nobel Prize-winning alumni and faculty, all things that have sprung from the Urbana campus.

That reality - the enormous benefit derived from public universities like Illinois - is one reason why Ikenberry remains optimistic about the future of higher education "simply because, in the long run, I don't think the voters of Illinois will allow [a decline]," he said.

"The quality of life in Illinois and around the country, it all hangs on ... higher education," Ikenberry said. "Our future depends on what citizens know and can do. It turns on innovation and creating the better mouse trap.

"If Illinois cannot compete at the highest levels," he added, "we'll be lost."

Dey is a columnist and editorial writer for The News-Gazette in Champaign-Urbana.