Facts – The budget crisis at UIC
Facts
- The State of Illinois owes the university $483 million.
- State support of the University has dropped from 48% of our total budget in 1990 to only 16% in 2010.
- Furloughs alone at UIC will amount to $17 million cut from the university budget.
- Since 2002, the State has cut back its support (adjusted for inflation) of the University by almost 40%, adjusted for inflation. Tuition keeps going up because that is the only way the University can make up for such severe cuts.
- Even before the financial crisis began in 2008, state funding for universities had hit its lowest level in 25 years (see Chronicle of Higher Education, 1/3/10). Government-funded “guaranteed” student loan programs are shrinking, as are the number of large banks willing to provide them (see Chronicle of Higher Education, 2/29/08).
- As state funding declines, tuition goes up, but tuition was already growing at three times the rate of median household income; the reliance on tuition (and the shrinking availability of student loans, and big hikes in tuition already announced for 2010) make college much less accessible (see New York Times, 12/3/08).
- Numbers of tenure-stream faculty have been diminishing over the past 20 years. In 1991, LAS had 596 tenure-stream faculty, and and in 2010, the number is 365. Meanwhile, enrollments have steadily increased.
