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WHO can afford ivory towers these days? Not state universities in Illinois, sensitive to the sound of change in trying times. Enrollments are dwindling and money is tight. An ongoing debate concerning the restructuring of the state's higher education system has once again become an issue, intensified by the funding pinch.

The most significant recent step in a long-running consideration of higher education organization in Illinois over the past 30 years, is a restructuring plan proposed by state Reps. Douglas N. Kane (D., Springfield) and Jim Edgar (R., Charleston). The plan created quite a stir when it was set forth in a press conference February 13. Yet it was more a trial balloon than a finalized goal; no bill is expected to be advanced until after legislative hearings, which began the last week in March.

Although Edgar has resigned from the legislature (announced March 7) to become the governor's legislative liaison, Rep. Kane said that it will not effect the reorganization plan.

Other restructuring plans may also be proposed this session, including one rumored plan of Chicago Democrats to split the Illinois Board of Higher Education (IBHE) into two boards -- one for Chicago area schools and one for downstate.

The plan advanced by Kane and Edgar calls for no change in the position of the IBHE at the top, only a realignment below that level. It would not affect the community college system. A "system of systems" approach would be retained, but governance boards and their units would be rearranged (see box).

The Kane-Edgar plan

Kane and Edgar say the present aggregate structure is "inefficient and expensive." The two downstaters propose abolition of two of the five existing governance boards -- the Board of Regents and the Board of Governors. They propose realignment of the schools under the boards at the University of Illinois (U of I) and at Southern Illinois University (SIU). Their plan would essentially grant much more authority to SIU and much less authority to the U of I. However, Edgar says "as we emphasized when we announced our proposals, we offer them as an opening of discussion, not a final solution." The initial plan was based upon hearings held in 1978 by the House Committee on State Government Organization, and the final bill will likely emerge from committee hearings this year. Rep. Kane is co-chairman of the committee; Edgar was minority spokesman.

Proponents of realignment say the present system, formed piecemeal over several decades as new universities were founded, does not make intrinsic sense because it is more a historic happenstance than a purposeful structure for governance.

Defenders of the existing system (including IBHE Executive Director James Furman) say reform has been carefully studied several times by IBHE master planning committees, most recently in A Master Plan for Postsecondary Education in Illinois, a report released in March 1976. That report recommended making no changes in governance since, in its words, "The groupings of institutions under existing governing boards appear to work well; there is no evidence that some institutions have been favored at the expense of other institutions."

This finding is contradicted by some concerned people, including Rep. Helen F. Satterthwaite (D., Urbana), who points out that when the U of I's requests are lumped with requests from other state schools, the university is put at a unique disadvantage in its efforts to compete with nationally known research institutions outside the state. "I think it may be time for the University [of Illinois] to indicate that the united front has worked more adversely at the U of I than at the other institutions because there is a bigger discrepancy between the salary level there and their competitors who are after the same faculty people," says Rep. Satterthwaite.

A February 18 editorial in the Peoria Journal Star agreed with the need for system overhaul, on similar grounds. The editorial argued that "the evening up of the second, third, fourth, and fifth-rate state schools, can only come about after the management of the system has been taken from the politicians and invested in a truly powerful Higher Board."

Few could argue against the contention that the schools under the long-established and elected U of I Board of Trustees possess more political clout than the schools under the newer, appointive Boards of Regents and Board of Governors. One reason maybe the generations of loyal alumni of the U of I now occupying powerful positions

14 / May 1979 / Illinois Issues

in Illinois public and private places. But another is that the U of I system has one president for the campuses created within this mini-system. The SIU board The Southern Illinois University Board has also wielded considerable political might, despite being an appointive board. But like the U of I, it governs university campuses created as one mini-system. It also had only one president, and the SIU board announced recently it will revert to one instead of two separate top administrators for each of its two main campuses -- Carbondale and Edwardsville. The SIU board has been powerful largely because it has had forceful advocates in the legislature -- including the late Secretary of State and former Speaker of the House Paul Powell (D., Anna) and former majority leader Clyde L. Choate (D., West Frankfort). Both southern Illinoisans were adept at cajoling or arm-twisting fellow legislators into compromises favoring SIU. Two of the other appointed boards -- the Board of Governors of State Colleges and Universities (BOG) and the Board of Regents (BOR) — govern individual colleges, some of which were small colleges expanded in the last few decades and others which were created within the decade, but all have separate presidents. The other appointed board is the Illinois Community College Board. The members of the four appointed boards are appointed by the governor with the advice and consent of the Senate.

The present governance structure is called a "system of systems" to describe the subdivision of public higher education into many systems, each with its own manifest functions and responsibilities. The Kane-Edgar proposal would reorganize the universities more along geographic lines, but would retain the Illinois Board of Higher Education as the top board and four intermediate boards -- although not the same four as now. (See box for present organization and Kane-Edgar proposed realignment.)

The Illinois Board of Higher Education (IBHE) is the top board in the organizational structure, and all other boards are responsible to it. Its function is to coordinate the functions of the intermediate governing boards. "In Illinois the term 'coordination' is used generally to embrace statewide master planning, determination of institutional scope and mission, and program review and approval," according to Boyd R. Keenan in his book, Governance of Illinois Higher Education 1945-75 (also see his article, "Higher education in Illinois," January 1975, Illinois Issues).

The present system of systems was developed from the ground up over several decades. At the end of World War II there were two separate and distinct "systems" of public higher education in Illinois, one governed by the University of Illinois Board of Trustees and the other by the Teachers College Board. The U of I board governed its Urbana-Champaign campus and the medical complex in Chicago. The Teachers College Board governed Northern Illinois State College at DeKalb, Eastern Illinois State Teachers College at Charleston, Western Illinois State Teachers College at Macomb, Illinois State Normal University at Normal and Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.

In 1949, four years after the war, college enrollments had nearly doubled in Illinois mainly due to enrollment of veterans under the GI Bill of Rights, a federal scholarship program. The legislature removed SIU from the jurisdiction of the Teachers College Board, and set up the SIU Board of Trustees. Two years later the Teachers College Board was freed from the control of the Illinois Department of Registration and Education, which it had been under since 1917. From 1950 to 1960 the three boards of higher education were independent, with no umbrella board to coordinate governance.

The IBHE

In 1960 a legislative study commission, established by the General Assembly, called for a strong coordinating board. New Gov. Otto Kerner supported legislation for setting up such a board, even though all six existing state universities opposed the plan. Some administrators feared that a large planning board would neglect some school or schools under a new system. Others feared that politics might become an overriding concern to the detriment of education.

In 1961 Gov. Kerner worked out a legislative compromise. A law was passed (Ill. Rev. Stats. 1961, ch. 144, sec. 191) establishing a 15-member board to coordinate planning, budgeting and administration of federal programs. The Illinois Board of Higher Education was born, and the governor was to appoint the IBHE chairman -- as is still required.

The IBHE's first task was to prepare a "master plan for the development, expansion, integration, coordination and efficient utilization ... of higher education." Such plans were to be a continuing requirement for IBHE. The first master planning effort was called "Phase I," and it was started in 1962, with 10 technical committees named to study every aspect of higher education. As a result of this study, IBHE approved a master plan calling for creation of a statewide junior college board -- which the General Assembly then mandated in 1965.

The "system of systems" was an unofficial result of Master Plan, Phase

15 / May 1979 / Illinois Issues

II, recommended by technical Committee N, chaired by James C. Worthy, then a partner in a national consulting firm, a former assistant U.S. secretary of commerce (1953-1955), and a former vice president of Sears. Committee N recommended all public higher education in Illinois be divided into five systems, by kinds and levels of programs offered at each campus. The plan is similar to that still in use, with five systems distinguished as follows:

1. Fully developed, multipurpose university (like the U of I)

2. Rapidly developing multipurpose university (like SIU)

3. Liberal arts university (like NIU and ISU)

4. State universities and colleges (like EIU and WIU -- having limited studies, usually no professional schools except teacher education, and only limited doctoral programs, if any).

5. Junior/community colleges

The five systems were each to have a governing board, responsible to IBHE. "Each governing board should be responsible for a particular type or kind of education . . . [and] a manifest diversity should differentiate each system from others," the Phase II Master Plan stated. The plan relied upon Committee N's recommendations to propose creation of a new Board of Regents for liberal arts universities. And Phase II also advocated "free-standing campuses" within each system, each of which would be managed internally by a chief executive, as opposed to branch campuses administered from a central office. IBHE also recommended establishment of commuter colleges in the Chicago area, and one in Springfield. The legislature ultimately approved the Regency University Act in 1967, granting $3 million for site acquisition and planning of two new senior universities.

The 'system of systems'

After this phase of planning, the phrase "system of systems" became the common jargon for describing Illinois public university governance. Although the nomenclature was never used by the IBHE itself or the General Assembly, it had been recommended by Committee N. Most experts agree a system of systems exists today, as it has since 1969 when two new schools -- Sangamon State University, Springfield, and Governors State University, Park Forest -- were founded by the legislature, and the new campuses assigned to boards.

Board assignments by IBHE followed recommendations of a "Special Committee on New Senior Institutions," headed by Worthy. Sangamon State was aligned with the Board of Regents, and Governors State was placed under the Board of Governors, despite a bid by the U of I to gain control of governance at both new schools.

Also in 1969, new Gov. Richard B. Ogilvie appointed George L. Clements, chairman of Jewel Companies, to succeed Ben W. Heineman as IBHE chairman. Clements asked Worthy to chair a reconvened Committee N to examine the governance structure and ways to improve it. The second Committee N was a blue ribbon citizens' panel of nine members. It included two former governors -- federal Judge Otto Kerner and William G. Stratton, who, along with Worthy, had helped create the system of systems.

The timing of the reconvened Committee N angered some university administrators. IBHE was in the late stages of preparing Master Plan, Phase III; a new Bureau of the Budget was making demands of all institutions for campus master plans; and the growth of education spending was declining. Educators were busy.

The 'Committee N' report

The second Committee N recommended that the system of systems be continued, that SIU and the U of I elect presidents for each of their campuses, that all four senior institution governing boards be appointed by the governor, and that the governing boards assert more critical evaluations of university and program budgets, instead of merely advocating growth.

The Committee N report was received by IBHE in 1971, yet was never discussed by that board, perhaps because the committee had immersed itself in controversy by openly discussing separation of Chicago Circle campus from the U of I. The report would have affected SIU and the U of I the most, by decentralizing administrative authority on campus and reducing the clout of governance boards. It would have balanced power more evenly among governance boards, lessening the obvious advantages of SIU and the U of I. The system of systems would have been strengthened to prevent centralization of power in IBHE, or an overbalance of clout among governance boards or campuses.

IBHE voted to receive the Committee N report on May 19, 1971, but excluded discussion of the report from final Phase III recommendations. Critics of N maintained that the committee should

16 / May / Illinois Issues

not have been reconvened, since Phase III was not constituted to consider governance, but was only charged with assessing graduate and professional education. Therefore, Phase III recommended only that a new planning phase be established for consideration of "an integrated system of higher education, one statewide network . . . ."

The Committee N report became a tool for Phase IV master planning, since it outlined major alternatives to the system of systems. The four alternatives were: (1) make no change; (2) rearrange by program, typology and location; (3) create an institutional governing board for each campus under a regional structure; or (4) start an experimental system composed of some governing boards and some institutional boards.

Phase IV reached planning conclusions in March 1976, having begun in November 1973. It too supported the system of systems approach.

The Kane-Edgar plan is the most comprehensive proposal in the governance field since the Phase IV report. Ironically, James C. Worthy, the man most responsible for the system of systems, presently a professor of management at Northwestern University, now says he thinks "that the time has come when a fresh look should be taken at the whole governance system." He refuses to comment on the Kane-Edgar plan, but says it is "useful of Rep. Kane to raise the issue; I think it is certainly a pertinent proposal."

The Bureau of the Budget

Indeed, there have been indications in the past that Worthy feels that the Bureau of the Budget's (BOB) control of university management is a threat to the universities in a period of tight revenue and falling enrollments, and that the system of systems may need to be changed in favor of campus boards responsible directly to the IBHE. This would strengthen IBHE's centralized role to advocate an overall higher education plan before the BOB; presumably power would be divided among many campus boards as opposed to being concentrated in intermediate system boards.

The Kane-Edgar plan is likely to be one of many changes proposed for university governance, now that money for everything, including education, is tight. The real cause of the controversy is the struggle for money and prestige among state universities and between IBHE and BOB (an office of the governor). An intermittent struggle for distribution of wealth and power among public colleges and universities has been waged for almost two decades, and the money crunch will necessarily intensify the battle. The battle is between many regions, institutions and philosophies, but state money is the key prize.

17 / May / Illinois Issues