Illinois budget impasse damaging state universities

Mel Sabella, a physics professor at Chicago State University, says the lack of funding forced the layoff of more than 300 university employees, or one-third of its workforce, during the 2015–16 school year. To raise awareness of the crisis that year, about 20 Chicago State student demonstrators shut down three nearby freeways in January 2016. The drastic downsizing has helped achieve some level of financial stability this year, Sabella says, but enrollment has plunged by 25% or more in the past two years.

Chicago State serves a predominantly African American population, and last year it graduated six black physics majors, about 3% of the black physics bachelors awarded that year in the US. The university has five physics faculty members, not counting one currently detailed to NSF. Adjunct and lecturer positions have been jettisoned, and the permanent faculty have had to take on teaching more upper-level courses, some of which are sparsely attended.

Amber Wise taught chemistry at Chicago State for three years before resigning in 2016 and heading to Seattle, where she found a job in the private sector. She says she most likely would not have left had it not been for the budget deadlock. “When I started in 2013, everything seemed great. There was money for minority students in STEM [science, technology, engineering, and mathematics], there were grant applications for professors at minority-serving institutions, and it seemed like a great place to land. I loved the students, and I loved the other faculty,” she says.

With the impasse, “things flipped on a dime.” Wise was expected to teach four courses a semester, while operating a research lab and finding grants to fund it. “I was working until midnight, setting my alarm for 5am to get up and work again, and my salary was ridiculously low,” she says.

“I felt privileged that I had options to leave and find something else. But the students? That’s their lifeline to get out of the South Side and make their lives better,” Wise says. “You want to talk about reducing crime in Chicago, try educating some folks on the South Side.”

Although primarily an undergraduate institution, NEIU, also in Chicago, expects its faculty and students to do some research. But the university has had to severely curtail the internal funding it long provided to help start research programs, says Srinivas, and the travel budget has been zeroed. Enrollment at NEIU fell this year by 3.6%, and she says as many as 10 of the university’s 250 tenured faculty have left for positions in other states since the stalemate began. Recruitment has continued, but any offers are made contingent on the availability of state funding. State universities are hopeful that at the very least, another round of stopgap funding will materialize.

Paulo Acioli, an NEIU physics professor, says employees have been forced to take eight unpaid furlough days this year, including the entire spring break. With the elevation of Srinivas to associate dean, the physics department is down to three faculty, and it’s unlikely that she will be replaced, Acioli says. He now worries that the state may “flag” the physics department for possible closure due to insufficient numbers of graduating physics majors.

Sabella says he’s committed to Chicago State, but he’s worried about the future. “If you lose a place like Chicago State . . . you lose an institution that’s helping to address diversity in the field,” he says. “It’s easy to destroy something fast; it’s a lot harder to build it up.”

At the Carbondale campus of Southern Illinois University, interim chancellor Brad Colwell warned faculty and staff in late March to brace for cuts of $30 million—29% of its usual state appropriation—in the fiscal year that begins 1 July. Carbondale, the largest of Southern Illinois’s three campuses, already endured a $21 million cut in the current year. In his memo, Colwell estimated that 158 of 4800 staff positions will be eliminated for the next academic year, adding to the 293 positions already lost during the budget dispute. Most of the new reductions will be attained by not filling vacancies.

Carbondale spokeswoman Rae Goldsmith says the belt-tightening is partly due to a need to start replenishing internal accounts meant for other purposes, from which money was borrowed to maintain operations during the past two years. Carbondale normally expects to receive about $100 million in state appropriations, around one-quarter of its operating budget. About $40 million was provided in the two stopgap measures, but all of that was spent during the first year of the impasse, leaving no state funding for 2016–17.

Enrollment at Carbondale declined 7.6% from 2015 to 2016. Universities in neighboring states that offer in-state tuition rates have been using the budget stalemate as a student recruiting tool, says Goldsmith. “There is doubt being planted in the minds of our students about the viability of their institutions. We spend a lot of time talking with students and parents, reassuring them we are here to stay.”

The situation isn’t so dire at the University of Illinois system, which includes the state’s flagship Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) campus. Just 9% of that institution’s $2 billion budget would normally come from state appropriations. More than one-third of revenue is from tuition, which is high relative to that of most comparable institutions in other states, says interim provost John Wilkin. UIUC’s tuition for 2015–16 was $17 086, whereas the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s was $10 415 and Chicago State’s, $9994.

Relative to the regional universities, UIUC has larger reserves and an endowment to help tide it over through lean times. Its strong credit rating will permit borrowing, should that become necessary, Wilkin adds.

Nonetheless, institutions outside Illinois have been trying to poach UIUC faculty, Wilkin acknowledges. “We’ve been targeted by other universities at an unprecedented level, 50% more than a couple of years ago, both this year and last. But we’ve been very successful in retaining faculty. We may look vulnerable, but we’re doing great, thanks.”

Wilkin acknowledges some faculty departures. According to news reports, 50 of the 1900 tenure-track UIUC faculty members quit during the 2015–16 academic year and 23 the previous year. New faculty recruitments have been going fairly well, Wilkin says, although the pools of applicants for three positions currently advertised have been smaller than usual. That could be due to factors other than the state budget, he says, such as the state of the economy.

Disputes between governors and legislatures are nothing new, acknowledges Harnisch of the AASCU. “What is new is the brinkmanship . . . that has taken it to a whole new level.” In the latest example, New Mexico’s Republican governor Susana Martinez in April vetoed the higher-education portion of the state budget for the year that begins 1 July. The Democratic-controlled legislature has petitioned the state supreme court to overturn the veto; oral arguments were scheduled for 15 May (after Physics Today went to press).

Nevertheless, New Mexico State University chancellor Garrey Carruthers, a former state governor, reassured students questioning whether they should register for the fall term. “I’ve served in government before. I’ve been in this arena, and these things always work themselves out,” he said in a 24 April message to students, faculty, and staff.

A nine-month budget impasse in Pennsylvania ended in March 2016, when Democratic governor Tom Wolf allowed appropriations bills for education crafted by the Republican-controlled legislature to take effect. Wolf had refused to sign the bills in the absence of a balanced budget.

In Kansas, steep tax cuts initiated in 2012 have yet to produce the economic growth that Republican governor Sam Brownback had promised. Funding to the state’s six public universities fell from $408 million in 2013 to $399 million last year. In February, after tax revenue forecasts fell short, Brownback ordered an additional $17 million in cuts to the universities, about 3% of their appropriation.

State funding for the University of Wisconsin system was cut $362 million from FY 2012 to FY 2017, according to UW system officials. But Republican governor Scott Walker, who was first elected in 2010, has proposed a $42.5 million increase for the fiscal year beginning 1 July in his budget request now before the legislature. If approved, the increase would be the first reinvestment by the state that the system has seen in nearly a decade, said UW system spokesperson Stephanie Marquis.

Louisiana, Oklahoma, North Dakota, and Texas, which rely heavily on revenues from oil and gas production, have trimmed their higher-education spending as prices fell in recent years. Although crude-oil prices have recovered a bit from their lows at the beginning of the year, they remain below $50 per barrel, compared with more than $100 per barrel in 2014. The oil producing states “will have a rough ride in the years ahead,” says Harnisch.

“Universities are doing everything they can to protect the academic core of the institution and keep it affordable,” Harnisch continues. “But it’s been an incredibly difficult time for public university presidents.”