When I left the Illinois Board of Higher Education seven years ago, it marked the end of 20 years of work in three different state systems of higher education. In leaving one state and moving to the next (Ohio, Washington and Illinois) the urge was nearly irresistible to present the colleagues I'd left behind with a blueprint for the future — a plan, if you will, for political and educational leaders alike. It would describe a boatload of shortcomings that needed to be corrected and provide an especially wise agenda for action to carry colleges and universities into the 21st century, and perhaps beyond.

The thoughtful article written by Dr. Albert Somit, former president of Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, which appeared in the October issue of Illinois Issues, calls for a significant restructuring in the state university "system of systems." Clearly, Somit and I have different points of view about how well the Illinois system of higher education has worked in the past. What follows is an attempt on my part to make the case that Illinois has a first-rate college and university system and that all of us should tread very carefully lest we unintentionally ''throw sand in the gears" of a structure that has worked well in the past, and, in my judgment, will continue to work well in the future.

The year 1987 marks the 25th anniversary of the Illinois Board of Higher Education. By any measurement, these years have been unique in the growth and development of higher education. Today Illinois has a configuration of public colleges and universities that provides every high school graduate in the state with an opportunity for a college education. Today Illinois boasts an array of higher educational offerings and institutions of impressive program diversity and strength. Few, if any, states can match our higher education system. This is what it has to offer:

• A system of community colleges located in every geographic area of the state.

• A major public research and teaching university consistently acknowledged as one of the best five or six in the country.

• A complex of state universities which serve the Midwest and the nation and are without peer in providing baccalaureate, graduate and professional education for all citizens of Illinois.

• A superb combination of private liberal arts and private research and teaching universities which have prospered side by side with the public system of higher education. With the possible exception of California, no other state in the United States can match Illinois in the overall diversity and program strength of higher education. In 25 years Illinois' public higher education headcount enrollments have increased from 108,943 to 530,565, or by 387 percent. During that same period the state's private college enrollments increased from 107,885 to 166,343, or by 54 percent. The existing physical facilities of public universities and community colleges have an estimated replacement cost of $5.2 billion; approximately 76 percent of these facilities have been built since 1961. In 1961, the state appropriated $99.3 million in annual operating support for colleges and universities; 25 years later this amount had soared to $1.3 billion. (Adjusting for inflation, the $99.3 million figure equals $369.2 million in 1987 dollars). Largely through the Illinois State Scholarship Commission, private colleges and universities receive direct or indirect public support of $109.6 million in 1987 compared to $1.7 million in 1962. (The $1.7 million, adjusted for inflation, equals $6.3 million in 1987 dollars.)

The 25-year record of achievement for all sectors of Illinois higher education is, of course, the product of many factors. Governors and legislators have, with few exceptions, provided the political leadership and the financial resources needed for higher education to prosper and grow. There has also been a consistent record of leadership and commitment from all segments of higher education. Students, faculty, administrators and system representatives have worked together, achieving a maximum degree of cooperation with a minimum amount of bickering.

Some might contend that these many achievements came about in spite of the Illinois Board of Higher Education (IBHE) and the system of systems, not because of them. On the other hand, it would have been hard to achieve this track record with a tally flawed structure. Maintaining and enhancing quality in the face of enormous expansion and growth is a monumental achievement. It is hard to imagine how any significant variation in the organizational structure of the system of systems might have produced better results; it is easy to imagine many ways that such progress might have been sidetracked.

Somit's criticisms should be viewed in the context of these extraordinary accomplishments. Recommendations for change carry a considerable burden of proof. If it's not broken (using "ain't broke" doesn't seem right in this context), don't fix it.

Somit argues that the IBHE is ineffective and that the current structure of higher education in Illinois is flawed. A different structure presumably would be better. The following is another perspective on the six points made to support his argument:

"The IBHE is more concerned with protecting private than with furthering public education."

The IBHE is charged by statute to consider the needs of Illinois for higher education and the role of all sectors in meeting public needs, not simply to be an advocate for public institutions. Since the IBHE was created, however, public higher education has become much larger and programmatically richer. Southern Illinois University, for example, has added numerous graduate programs, acquired a medical school and a law school and built a new campus at Edwardsville. During these last 25 years Illinois has responded to the need to expand public higher education, but not at the expense of existing services provided by private institutions. Both sectors need to be strong for the system to be strong.

Compared to many states, the higher education community in Illinois has been usually successful in promoting general support for higher education rather than quarreling among sectors. The IBHE and its staff have tried to foster cooperation because all sectors are better off working together for public support rather than wasting energy and political capital in internecine warfare.

Somit alleges that the IBHE showed "bias" in its attempt to 'mandate sharply increased admission requirements for the public institutions" and that an effort to encourage private institutions to use the same standards occurred only under threat of a fight. Rather than bias, perhaps the IBHE focused its initial effort on public institutions because it has statutory responsibility to set minimum admission requirements for public institutions and no authority over private institutions' admission requirements.

The exact requirements proposed for would-be baccalaureate students are four years of high school English, three years of mathematics, three years of social studies, three years of science, and two years of art, music or foreign language. If these are "sharply increased" admission standards, the old ones must have been fairly casual. Clearly it was a good idea to encourage private institutions to adopt the same standards. I find it hard to believe that the IBHE staff or the board did so with any reluctance whatsoever.

Finally, the "pro-private" bias of the IBHE is not supported by the evidence of its budget recommendations. About 8 percent of the higher education budget in Illinois ends up in private institutions, and almost all of that amount is in the form of financial aid to students. This amount of state support is far smaller than the proportionate contribution of private institutions to the people of Illinois. Supporting private higher education takes nothing away from the importance and value of public colleges and universities, nor does it suggest any failure of the state or the IBHE to support public higher education. ''The IBHE has become a compliant gubernatorial tool in limiting expenditures for public higher education."

Somit presumably would not make this kind of argument if the IBHE had engaged in public denunciations of the governor. Whether such criticism, or more criticism of the governor's budgets than the IBHE has in fact offered, would have yielded better results is sheer speculation. Somit is correct to say that the IBHE has not publicly criticized the governor. He is absolutely incorrect to say that the IBHE has not asked the legislature to appropriate more than the governor's budget, nor is he correct to imply that the IBHE has not been critical of various governors' budgets.

In fact, the board's recommendations have always been introduced in the General Assembly without any reductions to reflect the governor's budget. In addition, the staff of the IBHE and the presidents and chancellors of the various public institutions have consistently urged support for the board's recommendations. The General Assembly usually amends the bills introduced, sometimes providing more than the governor has budgeted, sometimes adopting his budget, and in a few cases providing less than recommended by the governor. The facts are that appropriations for all major segments of state government usually come close to the governor's budget because of his constitutional powers.

Serving as executive director of the IBHE under two governors, Dan Walker and Jim Thompson, I learned some hard facts very quickly. The governor of Illinois has extraordinary controls over the appropriation process. Even on those rare instances when the legislature appropriated more funds to higher education than recommended by the governor, the appropriations could be (and usually were) reduced by a veto action of the governor. And budget veto overrides are more rare than a cool, dry Springfield summer.

Consequently, convincing the governor and his budget director (although I never convinced Bob Mandeville about anything) about higher education funding needs is the critical phase of the budget process. Arguments lost in January are not won in July.

A look at the record suggests that the IBHE has done about as well as possible in dealing with the various crosscurrents and political agendas that always exist in a state Capitol. It is difficult to imagine being successful in the budgetary process for very long without a reasonably good relationship with both the governor and General Assembly. The IBHE was created by both the governor and General Assembly and needs to work well with both.

"The IBHE has been increasingly ineffectual at what is presumably its major responsibility, i.e., providing policy leadership and direction for public higher education."

Somit's argument here is based on three cases: IBHE's unsuccessful opposition to a new law school at Northern Illinois University; IBHE's alleged capitulation to politics in approving an engineering school at Northern, and the fact that the legislature, over IBHE opposition, almost unanimously voted for a law to ensure that faculty in Illinois "have an adequate command of the English language." It seems a bit forced to argue ineffectual leadership on the basis of three cases in more than 25 years. There are numerous cases of effective leadership and, confidentially, Somit was kind enough not to mention a few other bloopers that could be laid at my feet during my six-year tenure at the IBHE.

From the board's perspective, the need for a new law school at Northern (or anywhere else in Illinois) was dubious by all objective measures. Accordingly, in 1979-80 the IBHE refused to approve the request and was overruled by the General Assembly and the governor. In this context, I should mention that in 1975 the IBHE opposed a proposal by legislative leaders with support from the governor's office to create a new public law school in Springfield. In this instance, the IBHE prevailed.

I remember vividly a spirited (and, for my part, somewhat emotional) discussion between myself and a key legislative leader concerning the IBHE's opposition to the Springfield law school. The point I made (my voice broke several times) was that the IBHE is responsible for making recommendations on the best available empirical data, while the final authority to approve or disapprove rests with the state's political leadership. Political leaders sometimes base their decisions on factors other than empirical data — as well they should. The law school initiatives, both in Springfield and DeKalb, were fueled by the desire to pay tribute to an especially distinguished governmental leader. In this context the board was at a tremendous disadvantage in its efforts to demonstrate that the state didn't need more lawyers. It's hard to imagine how it could have demonstrated more effective leadership.

The case of the engineering school at Northern is different. It is true that members of the IBHE opposed this initiative, which was debated a long time and passed with a number of dissenting votes. It is partly true that there was some "private distaste" among the staff, as Somit says. However, this was related primarily to obvious appeals to political figures by Northern before the case had even been considered by the IBHE.

Despite some heavy-handed advocacy, there was a reasonably persuasive body of evidence favoring a new engineering school at Northern, which is located in a rapidly growing area of the state. The 1985 action of the board to approve a new engineering school at Northern supported a staff analysis that attempted to treat the question as objectively as possible. In the context of a changing economy and the IBHE's strong efforts to expand existing engineering programs at the University of Illinois and Southern Illinois University, Northern was able to make a persuasive case for a new program in its region of the state.

Somit's final example of the growing "ineffectiveness" of the IBHE is the recent legislative vote for a law seeking to assure that faculty have adequate command of the English language. This is curious because it involves a management issue at state universities, not a planning or coordinating issue at IBHE. It may well be that the credibility of the public universities was more at stake here than IBHE's.

In this context it seems worthwhile to observe that the effectiveness of the IBHE and the effectiveness of higher education, public and private, are parts of the same cloth. The credibility of the entire enterprise is affected by the actions of each of the agencies and institutions involved. The IBHE has a lot to do with its own credibility and effectiveness, but it is important for colleges and universities to realize that they also play an important role.

"The IBHE budget recommendations consistently favor the University of Illinois, the state's flagship system."

The "evidence" offered to support this charge includes the following: dollars per FTE (full-time equivalent) student, dollars per FTE faculty, and capital appropriations for the past five years. Measures such as these are so crude that no budget agency could survive for long if it attempted to use them as a basis for budgeting. They obscure the differences in academic programs and physical plant needs that exist among institutions, and they ignore the reality that institutions with large graduate and professional programs and research institutes need more resources than institutions that emphasize undergraduate instruction.

In fact, achieving budget equity requires a complex analysis of campus needs that takes many factors into account. The IBHE budget process is based on such an analysis, founded on more than 20 years of working with public universities to devise an equitable approach. Naturally no such process is perfect, but its imperfections are trivial compared to the distortions invited by the measures Somit uses to allege a bias in favor of the University of Illinois.

Somit suggests that the IBHE rarely recommends different percentage annual increments to university operating budgets, and he argues that the "IBHE policy has simply served to perpetuate, or worsen, already existing inequalities." That the IBHE has mindlessly perpetuated alleged inequalities in the state's higher education budget for the last 25 years is hard to swallow.

The facts are that the IBHE budget recommendations over the years have included a number of "non-formula" increases and decreases for university campuses to reflect changing enrollments, to support new and expanded programs and to assure comparable funding for comparable programs. In any one year it has been unusual for differences larger than a percentage point or two to emerge, but over time substantial shifts in funding have occurred to improve equity among campuses and to meet new priorities.

The kind of operating budget equity Somit apparently is seeking would be appropriate only if the scale and complexity of programs at Southern Illinois University and perhaps Northern were exactly the same as those at the University of Illinois. It is less clear that this kind of uniformity is needed.

Somit's argument on the capital budget is similarly flawed because he makes no attempt to analyze, even among similar institutions, the actual capital needs of the various systems. Capital budgets are rarely comparable over short periods of time because the need for repairs, the age of facilities and the specific program needs on the various campuses vary widely. Over a period of five years an apparently "even-handed" capital budget is likely to be a poor budget; needs are not evenly distributed. With regard to the University of Illinois it also may be noted that large graduate education and research programs require more space and the university may have more old buildings than any other system because the others (under the aegis of the IBHE) have expanded much more rapidly than UI in the past three decades.

"The system of systems, with its boards, system heads, and system staffs layered on top of the campus officials, is needlessly expensive.''

Somit adds up the system costs (far less than 1 percent of the appropriated and nonappropriated budgets of the universities involved), and proposes to "save" $4.0 million in direct costs and a possible $4.0 million in indirect costs. He presumes without analysis that the functions now performed by the system of systems could be eliminated and that the "new" system could govern more universities with perhaps half the staff of the current one.

It is easy to show paper savings like this, but far more difficult to realize them. Each of the four Illinois university systems is larger in size than the entire public university system in many states. It is arguable that any potential savings from consolidation (particularly on such a small scale) would be dwarfed by the inefficiencies that often accompany greater centralization and the disruption that normally accompanies major organizational changes.

"The system of systems is inherently irrational with regard both to its overall structure and to the manner in which the individual institutions are grouped into systems."

Somit proposes to make the higher education system more "rational" by adopting the "California" model of "different mission, different system." On its face this proposal has some appeal, just as a proposal for a single system, the "New York" model, has some attractiveness. It is worth mentioning that Wisconsin used to have the California model and abandoned it for the New York model.

The problem with Somit's proposal is not that these are inherently bad models, but that the structure of higher governance has very little to do with the fundamental higher education issues facing Illinois or any other state. The question of inter-campus equity is always an issue no matter what the "mission." Just ask the University of Illinois, which has two campuses with "similar" missions. And the question of mission is never finally settled. Ask California, which recently had a major battle over doctoral programs in its "state university" system.

Whenever the question of structure is raised, particularly in proposals to consolidate, one needs to consider a number of questions:

• What is really wrong with the current structure? Are the problems structural or is discussion of structure a cloak for other agendas or problems? Furthermore, existing structures reflect historical traditions and conditions. Have conditions changed sufficiently to require a new structure? Will existing institutions adapt to a new structure without losing effectiveness? Will important traditions and affiliations (regional missions, for example) be lost or impaired?

• What are the real gains in efficiency? What are the corresponding losses in responsiveness and a sense of local control? Will it be easier to make important campus decisions in a consolidated structure or harder? Will more uniformity yield more efficiency or more rigidity and less creativity?

• What will it cost in terms of time and effort to deal with the structural question? Does the problem warrant the cost? Is this among the most important issues on the agenda?

I would be the last to argue that the present structure of Illinois higher education is perfect, but there is little evidence that any of the various governing structures is without problems. Indeed, they are grappling with the same problems we face here in Illinois. Likewise there is precious little evidence that changing the structure of higher education changes much of anything that is really important, especially when no substantial growth or contraction is likely to occur.

On the other hand, the experience of Wisconsin, which moved from the "California system" to the "New York system" in the early 1970s, suggests that changing the structure of higher education tends to become an overwhelming distraction for both the institutions involved and the political leadership of the state. There are a number of important substantive issues and problems facing Illinois higher education. It would be a shame to divert the energy and intelligence needed to wrestle with those problems to a divisive debate over structural issues.

Remember. "If it ain't broke. . . ."