Today is National Teacher Appreciation Day and this week is National Teacher Appreciation Week. In my previous post, I provided the statement made by John King, Secretary of Education, to mark the day and week. But, in a demonstration of not just persistent tone deafness but political obstinacy that is one of the most baffling…
These are the opening paragraphs from a report by WLS—ABC, Channel 7, in Chicago: “Chicago State University laid off more than 300 people due to lack of funding during the ongoing state budget impasse. The layoffs were announced Friday [April 29] and effective immediately. “The school has been struggling with budget issues for months. Just…
On Monday, April 25, Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner signed legislation providing $600 million for the state’s public universities and community colleges, funding that may help to keep the campuses open through the summer while the budget battle between the Republican governor and Democratic legislature continues. Rauner released a statement suggesting that the bill “doesn’t solve…
There has been a great deal of talk about John Kasich’s “moderate” positions that will presumably make him attractive to some broad swathe of American voters in the general election should he somehow be able to secure the Republican nomination. In today’s edition of Morning Jolt newsletter for the National Review, Jim Geraghty discusses the…
Although the universities in the state’s flagship system have not yet been impacted as severely as other institutions by the ongoing state budget impasse, some significant issues are clearly surfacing. The following is from an article by Charles Thomas and Ben Bradley on the WLS-TV website: “On the University of Illinois-Chicago campus, the state promised…
The following paragraphs are taken from an article by Leah Nicolini written for the Northern Star, the student-produced newspaper at Northern Illinois University: “Due to a lack of state appropriated funds, NIU plans to cut $30 million from its budget, by the end of the semester, to keep the school out of deficit for the…
These are the opening paragraphs of the news story “Illinois Risks Brain Drain as University Students Look Elsewhere” written by Elizabeth Campbell for Bloomberg News: “As a May 1 deadline looms for high school seniors deciding where to attend college, students are thinking twice about universities in Illinois, where the worst budget crisis in state…
One of the more detailed overviews of the immediate impact of the budget mess in Illinois on the state’s college and university campuses has been provided by George Gallanis in a March 29 article for the World Socialist Web Site: “Earlier this month Southern Illinois University, located in Carbondale, announced the potential layoffs of 180…
These are the opening paragraphs of a news story by Mike Riopell in the Chicago Daily Record: “A suburban Republican lawmaker wants to send Illinois universities four months’ worth of state funding to try to ensure they open their doors for the next school year. “The ‘stopgap’ proposal from state Rep. Mike Fortner, a West…
BY JOHN T. MCNAY John T. McNay is president of the Ohio Conference of the American Association of University Professors and a professor of history at the University of Cincinnati, Blue Ash. This op-ed appeared in the Cincinnati Enquirer and is available here. Professors at Ohio’s public universities and community colleges acknowledge the determination of state…