Depending on who you ask, Illinois is either not spending nearly enough on public universities or spending more than any state in the country.
The hundreds of students, faculty, and staff from universities across Illinois who rallied at the capital a few weeks ago believe there needs to be a lot more state investment.
“Our institutions have been starved of resources by the state over multiple administrations, multiple governorships, multiple sessions of the assembly," said Mark Van Wienen. He's an English professor at Northern Illinois University and president of the tenure and tenure-track union.
He was part of a busload from NIU that made the trip to Springfield to support the Adequate & Equitable Public University Funding Act, which is a higher-ed funding plan proposed by Democratic lawmakers.
Illinois' higher-ed funding history and how college got so expensive
When you account for inflation, state appropriations for higher-ed have gone down 40% since 2002. Back then, most university revenue came from state funding. Only about 25% came from tuition and fees.
Now, as Van Wienen says, it’s flipped.
“The current Huskie at NIU," he said, "is covering 65%."
Van Wienen says you can draw a direct line from the decline of state appropriations to the skyrocketing prices of tuition. It’s created a situation where it’s often cheaper for Illinois students to leave the state for college and pay out-of-state tuition somewhere else rather than attend college close to home.
Everyone, Republicans and Democrats, hates this. And pretty much everyone wants to change how the state funds public universities.
How does Illinois fund higher-ed now?
In fact, many argue there is no system. Right now, the state just looks at what schools got last year and gives all universities a flat increase or decrease.
But politicians have different reasons for why that's a bad way to do things.
Republican state representative Jeff Keicher says the current system rewards failing schools. He’s introduced his own higher-ed reform bill, to build a 10-year sustainability plan for state universities.
He argues it doesn’t make sense if one university loses students and another university gains students that they both get the same increase.
“So," he said, "they're getting significantly less per student than they did before, and it's almost a disincentive to enroll additional students, because you're not getting the money you need."
The other side says the current system is broken because it doesn’t weigh factors like how many low-income students schools serve and which have larger endowments.
What is the Adequate & Equitable Public University Funding Act?
A state commission’s report, which is the basis of the “equitable” funding bill, found no public universities are getting enough money to support their students, but — as NIU’s Van Wienen says — some are much closer than others.
“This commission," he said, "determined that NIU is at approximately 56% of adequacy."
It found the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has 92% of the funding it needs.
Van Wienen says it’s a reason why, while most public universities like NIU have seen steep enrollment declines over the past few decades, the University of Illinois system keeps setting enrollment records.
The “equitable” funding plan wants to fix that by pouring hundreds of millions of extra dollars into universities — prioritizing the schools furthest from “adequate” funding. It also looks at factors like school size, number of low-income students, and how much research it conducts.
Although most Illinois public universities support this plan, the University of Illinois system does not. Their leadership says it would lead to tuition increases.
Elaine Gaberik is the director of policy analysis at the Center for Tax & Budget Accountability, a non-profit research group that supports the equitable funding plan.
Gaberik says no universities — including U of I — would ever receive less money than they do right now under the “equitable” plan.
“Yes, they receive a smaller portion of those new funds that would go through the formula," she said. "But when you look at how far away certain other universities in the state are from what they need to successfully serve their students, that just makes sense.”
But Republican representative Jeff Keicher says state funding should strengthen the schools and programs that students are choosing.
"The dollars to the university should follow the student, so that should be the state support and that should also be the tuition support," he said.
What is the Republican-led plan?
But remember when I said some people argue Illinois actually spends the most on higher ed? That’s a point Keicher makes.
Illinois’ higher-ed spending per full-time student is the highest in the country.
“Throwing more money at them through this equitable funding formula, if we want to call it that, it's not going to get us through the next five years," said Keicher. "It's going to create a bigger need for more state income tax and revenue to bolster what these higher education institutions are doing, and that's not fair to the students; that’s not fair to the teachers; that’s not fair to the taxpayers.”
How can Illinois be spending the most and not spending nearly enough? Can both things be true at the same time?
Elaine Gaberik says, yes, it can!
“That [metric] does not take into account, first of all, the payment to the State University Retirement System," said Gaberik. "In FY2025, that was about $2.2 billion. So, just to put things into perspective, that's 43% of total state funds."
Basically, she says a lot of state higher-ed money isn’t actually going to students, it’s paying for pensions — mostly pension debt service.
But even if you remove pension money from the equation, Gaberik says Illinois is still above average when it comes to spending per full-time student.
She believes it’s even more complicated, though, because of another issue: Illinois public universities have over $8 billion worth of deferred maintenance, because the state hasn’t had a budget for those projects in 15 years.
“It's hard to say exactly how much this has affected the appropriations per student," said Gaberik. "I can't give you that figure, unfortunately, it’s definitely something that [we're] looking into."
So, since Keicher and others don't think universities are underfunded, why is enrollment dropping so far at some schools and not at others? He says there are a lot of factors, and it would be a big question for his commission to explore.
He’s also deeply concerned about the looming “enrollment cliff” universities across the country are approaching.
“Looking at the data points, from 2005 to 2035 there's going to be a net reduction in our higher education institutions, just from natural matriculation of Illinois high schools into colleges, you're going to look at one-third fewer students," said Keicher. "So, if we don't right-size now and we continue to do this, we are going to pull down all of the Illinois higher education institutions by trying to save them all.”
With significantly fewer college-age students coming through the pipeline, he says the state should at least consider radical change.
That could mean downsizing some campuses. He says maybe struggling schools could attract talent by specializing in the trades or fine arts.
What's next?
Keicher says the commission he’s proposing might not like any of those ideas, but it’s important to consider every option.
“Failure tomorrow is quickly arriving," he said, "and if we don't do it now, we're going to be in a real big world of hurt within the next five years."
Again, NIU's Mark Van Wienen.
"It is an offense that our legislators blame our institutions for declines in enrollment," he said, "when they are the ones who have under-resourced our institutions for a generation and more."
Van Wienen says the universities lacking the most resources are also the ones best-equipped to serve the students failed by the status quo — students of color, first-generation students, and those who can't move their family to pursue a four-year degree.
At this point, neither plan looks poised to pass the General Assembly this spring.
