AS PENSION COSTS RISE, PUBLIC COLLEGES PAY THE PRICE

Josh Keller

Public colleges tend to offer less in salaries than their private counterparts do. But many of them have had a secret weapon to retain faculty and staff members that private colleges cannot match: generous pensions.

Pensions have narrowed the compensation gap between public and private colleges. They can function as “golden handcuffs,” rewarding workers who stay for decades and keeping them from fleeing to competitors during their most productive years.

Read more at the Chronicle…

The Chronicle reports that the state has nearly repaid the higher education bill for 2009-2010 and then speculates about the borrowing that may lie in our financial future.

Illinois’s Public Universities Won’t Have to Borrow — for Now

By Eric Kelderman

The State of Illinois has repaid nearly all of the $464-million it owed to its public universities from the 2009-10 fiscal year, which ended on June 30.

Read more at the Chronicle…

Read the Directions

August 31, 2010
By Laurence Musgrove

I’d like to nominate the term “faculty-driven” as a candidate for disinvestment and elimination.

After serving as a director of composition and as the coordinator of a general education program at universities in the Midwest, I am beginning my second year as department head here at a university in West Texas. At our first all-faculty meeting of the year, it was announced that we are on the verge of two major academic initiatives that will require a substantial commitment of institutional time and energy. The first is a program review process, and the second is a quality enhancement project required by our accreditor.

Both of these efforts are necessary and, I suspect, will result in needed improvements. I have faith in the best practices upon which we will model our efforts. I also believe in the goodwill and good intentions of our academic leadership.

Read more at Inside Higher Ed…

Performance-based funding for public colleges gets a look

By Kimberly Pohl | Daily Herald Staff

A small contingent of public college educators and politicians are convinced of two things: the system in place isn’t working and more money won’t be available.

That’s why they’re exploring the idea of implementing a funding model for community colleges and public universities based not on enrollment, but rather on performance.

Two of the key players involved in the movement are first-year Harper College President Ken Ender and state Rep. Fred Crespo. They are well aware of the monumental task they face in winning over colleagues in their respective fields.

Read more at the Daily Herald…

The third ranking was reported by the Washington Monthly: NEIU is #50 with the lowest graduation rates. This excludes the “for-profit” sector of higher education. The list is accompanied by an article titled “College Drop Out Factories.” Chicago State is featured in the article…

More Pressure on Faculty Members, From Every Direction

By Margaret A. Miller

Changes in the American professoriate’s employment patterns and types, demographics, and work life are the greatest we have seen in over half a century. The model of the white, male, tenured teacher-scholar that emerged during the great expansion of higher education in the post-World War II decades has given way to an increasingly diverse, splintered, specialized, and transitory work force.

These changes are spurred in part by fiscal pressures. Underneath the difficulties caused by the recession are structural deficits in state budgets, the result of a demand for social services that cannot be met by current tax structures. Meanwhile, higher education’s costs have risen faster than even those of health care. States—and, increasingly, debt-ridden students—are struggling to meet those costs.

Read more at the Chronicle…

Illinois SURS to sell off $1.2 billion in investments

By Barry B. Burr
Source: Pensions & Investments
Date: August 23, 2010

Illinois State Universities Retirement System, Champaign, expects to sell $1.2 billion in investments this fiscal year to raise liquidity to pay pension benefits to participants, said Daniel L. Allen, chief investment officer.

SURS could undertake an asset-liability study next year because of the liquidity stress, Mr. Allen said. Its last asset-liability study was three years ago.

Illinois SURS, with $12.2 billion in defined benefit assets, has not received any of the $850 million in state contributions the system requested this fiscal year, which began July 1, Mr. Allen said.

Read more at Pensions & Investments…

We had anticipated a response to our July 27 counter to the administration’s compensation proposal. Unfortunately, the administration’s response on compensation passed today was incomplete so we will have to wait for the administration’s finished document.

Our lead negotiator, Jamie Daniel, suggested several options for future negotiation sessions: Tuesday mornings, Thursdays, Fridays after 10:30, evenings and weekends. The administration offered the following dates through September so if you are counting days until we reach agreement, mark your calendars for August 31, September 14, September 21 and September 28.

Teachers: Don’t blame us for mess

By Ed Geppert and Ken Swanson
August 19, 2010

Dennis Byrne’s Aug. 10 column on Illinois’ financially imperiled pension system struck a nerve. The presidents of the Illinois Education Association and the Illinois Federation of Teachers have responded with an essay that says the Tribune is being used as a “tool of terror.” The IEA Web site says the Tribune is “waging a relentless war against public employees over state pensions” and claims the “real author” of Byrne’s column was Eden Martin, president of the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago.

In the interest of debate, we present the essay from the IEA and IFT, and a response from Eden Martin.

How much longer will the Chicago Tribune allow itself to be used as a tool of terror by millionaire Eden Martin in his quest to deprive hundreds of thousands of Illinoisans of the reasonable retirement they, in large part, have paid for?

The Aug. 10 opinion piece, ostensibly written by public relations specialist Dennis Byrne, is a blatant attempt to frighten and intimidate innocent people who simply expect the State of Illinois to keep its promises.

Byrne/Martin’s claim that the state pension shortfall was caused by overly-generous pension benefits paid to state employees and teachers is provably false. And they know it.

Read more at the Chicago Tribune…

Why That Illinois Pension Check Will (Most Likely) Be in the Mail After All

Posted by Jeffrey Brown on Aug 16, 2010

As an economist, I often get annoyed when lawyers with no training in economics try to act as if they are experts in economic policy. As such, all the lawyers out there should be equally annoyed with this blog post, because I – an economist with no legal training – am about to make an observation about state constitutional law.

Read more at the Center for Business and Public Policy…