Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw) Weekend Contributor
I have to give Governor Bruce Rauner credit for not taking long to show his hand and publicly attack the Higher Education system in Illinois. It has only been a few weeks since he was inaugurated and he recently unveiled his budget. A budget plan that slashes over $200 million just from the University of Illinois alone.
At the very time Gov. Rauner announced he wants to slash the Higher Education budget for all universities in the State of Illinois by almost a third, he claimed that his budget makes education a priority!
“Higher education is set to take a major hit in Illinois.
Following similar announcements by the Republican governors of Wisconsin and Louisiana, newly-sworn in Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner released what he called a “turnaround” budget, that would slash nearly $209 million from the University of Illinois.” Think Progress
“It’s time to make education our top priority again – and that’s what this budget does,” he told lawmakers Tuesday night, touting his plan to give about $25 million more to early childhood education. “With reform, we will be able to invest more in education and give our kids world class schools.” Think Progress
While the proposed budget increases some funding for K-12 education, the University of Illinois system will lose one-third of its state financing under this budget. This very same proposed budget makes absolutely no mention of any increased revenue sources or plans. What will happen to the University system if these cuts are retained in the final budget?
One can expect the cuts to cause increased fees being charged to students as well as the loss of many educational programs. The result of these massive reductions in state financing will be to transfer the costs to students who are already paying high tuition and fee costs. The loan balances of many students already into the 6 figures and Gov. Rauner’s actions will make sure that student debt will continue to climb in Illinois.
So often the claims that all areas of the State have to share in the burden of digging out of a financial hole ends up with some of the most vulnerable bearing the brunt of that burden. If the Governor is convinced that we all have to sacrifice in this job to balance the budget, why wouldn’t new tax sources be considered along with reasonable cuts?
Will these draconian cuts make it more difficult for students from poor and middle class families to obtain a college education? In this very same budget proposal, Gov. Rauner biggest cuts are aimed directly at those who are least able to afford them.
“Yet the state would spend $400 million less on higher education, $600 million less on local governments, and $1.5 billion less on Medicaid, which handles health care costs for poor residents. University leaders and mayors said they were worried, and advocates for the poor said they feared medical needs would go unmet under deep cuts to Medicaid.” New York Times
When the cities, counties and municipalities raise their taxes to pay for basic services for their residents, who has to pay for those increases? “In many cases, Rauner’s state budget cuts could simply end up shifting costs: local governments could choose to raise property taxes, state universities could raise tuition and the CTA could increase fares.” Chicago Tribune
For a man who spent at least $37 million of his own money to get elected governor, he sure has no problem making the middle class and poor pay more for a college education and for health care and local taxes and transportation costs.
Rauner seems to be following the economic model that worked so “well” for Gov. Brownback in Kansas and Gov. Walker in Wisconsin.
Just how has that austerity approach worked out for Kansas and Wisconsin?
Additional Sources: Examiner.com; Crains Chicago Business
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I wouldn’t take a plumber’s word when giving a reference for a urologist. They may be familiar with leaking pipes, but that doesn’t give them any expertise in the matter of urology.
raff, Pretty uninformed, incurious, pompous and elitist answer. It concerns me as a professional, having to work w/ incompetents, and as a consumer, having to hire attorneys. It should concern all attorneys and I KNOW it does concern some GOOD ones, because they have told me. But, attorneys, more than any other group, take care of their own. I have hundreds of deposition transcripts in files that are proof positive there are many incompetent, incurious, pompous uninformed attorneys in Wisconsin. I work for a law firm that handles defense for attorney malpractice, hilarious if there weren’t real victims. The Supreme Court in Wisconsin is a joke w/ a senile Chief. Thanks for your precious and valuable time.
Hardly ……Common Core.
A competency test for a law degree would be much different than that for a computer science degree or an anthropology degree.
Nothing in common in those areas. The area of study of the degree would be the competency testing. I wouldn’t expect the anthro person to have the same skill sets as the computer programmer.
As the High School diploma, we should have an exit test there. I can’t tell you how worthless a high school diploma is when trying to hire someone. When I was in the banking environment, we would have people who graduated from high school who could barely write a coherent sentence and who had almost zero math skills. A high school diploma is worth about as much as a bucket of warm spit in some cases.
I see we’re doing selective deleting of comments at RIL again! Only some people are allowed to post insulting comments. One has to wonder why???
DBQ
Uh oh! Sounds like you’re on the road to Common Core! Trouble Ahead!
mespo
Hey! We’re Americans. We’re Exceptional. We don’t need no stinkin’ degrees.
Think of the money we’ll save when we eliminate high school degrees!
We’ll be like The Great Kreskin and just OBSERVE if someone is competent!
I don’t think that people are saying that having a college diploma is worthless. It does take time and (hopefully) dedication to go through the 4 years of college and if it is a Masters degree, even more perseverance. Those are admirable traits.
However, I don’t think that the value or perceived value of the piece of paper is what you think it is. (to paraphrase Inigo Montoya). The value is in the person who has obtained the diploma and what they have ACTUALLY learned and their ability to apply that learning outside of the halls of academia. Did they really learn anything from their college experience? What level of learning did they achieve?
One way to know this competency would be to have an exit exam along with the diploma. The mere possession of the paper is not a guarantee of excellence. Just as the mere possession of a driver’s license doesn’t make me a race car driver 🙂
mespo
I got Cardozo from the same place the Great Kreskin gets his….Buzzfeed, so no guarantees.
Thanks for the clarifications on Morill. I’m sure we’ll be hearing from Polonius Paul any moment listing all those states that require all HS grads entrance to their land grant schools.
Sandi:
I’ll apply your “logic” to my next surgeon.
Yes indeed, they are great examples.
Bruce:
“Off with their empty, lying heads!”
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Who? The diddled kids or the “worm tongued quislings of academe”?
Bret B:
Stay away from those exploding packages on the railway platform. The scales will hit you if you don’t. Everybody knows that!
Yes Mespo, my she is accomplished, she’s a Wisconsin resident and a Wisconsin lawyer, and she’s my daughter, so that makes her a target I guess.
Inga:
Diplomas from institutions of higher learning never mean anything to folks who don’t have ’em. Like Limbaugh and Hannity and, of course, Scott Walker or most any other right-wing antagonist.
I think what Walker, Hannity, and Rush have shown is a degree isn’t necessary. If you find something you love doing and you work hard to be the best, that’s what counts. Let’s not discourage good people to seek public service just because of a degree.
Inga:
“The discussion wasn’t even about diploma privilege until Spinelli brought it up in an attempt at discrediting my daughter who he thought graduated from the UW Law School.”
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Come on, Inga. That’s protected free speech to bad mouth the very real accomplishments of your daughter. It’s prohibited speech only when you bad mouth the bad mouther. Sort of an exception to the exception sort of thing.
The so called budget cutters never follow through. But if one could defund something, the worm tongued quislings of academe would be the place to start. They profit while kids are saddled with debt and taught inanities with worthless degrees that at best qualify them to work in destructive government bureaucracies or be diddled as interns in political campaigns. Off with their empty, lying heads!
Yes, well it’s going to be a meme soon that diploma’s don’t matter. After all their golden boy Walker doesn’t have one. That says a lot.
wade:
I’m surprised Cardozo flunked the bar exam. I always just assumed he wrote it.
I think the bigger issue here is not that Wisconsin lawyers get to practice law without a competency test……it is that the mere possession of a diploma of any kind from an institution of (so called) higher learning is really not worth a great deal. There is no guarantee that having a diploma makes you competent or better.
When you look at the idiotic wasteful fluffy classes that can be taken, the politically correct bull that is immaterial to the topics and is running through most classes grade inflation and a multitude of other factors that have literally dumbed down our educational system; the employer has no ability to judge the actual competency of the diploma holder without some sort of an exit exam or competency test. It is hire and be surprised.
However, when there ARE tests and hurdles above the diploma, such as a bar exam or an examination for (in my case) security licenses and for other such professional occupations, the employer can be more assured that the applicant actually DOES know the material. Shoot…..even a contractor to install your toilet is required to take an examination on laws, contract law, specifications and other plumbing regulations before they can be a contractor. And HE didn’t need a diploma for this….but he DID need a competency examination.
Just having a diploma really doesn’t mean much.
To bring it back to the budget issue….if the university and the schools in general cut back on fripperies, expensive administrative overhead and concentrated on CORE subjects and focused on the discipline being studied, it would not cost more to attend college. It might even cost less and the students would likely be better educated in the whole.
Bret:
On its way!