Higher Education in Illinois is Dying

Instapundit » Blog Archive » HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Higher Education in Illinois Is Dying. “Faculty and staff are nerv…

We found this rummaging through the Instapundit's odds and ends drawer. 

​More below the fold.

"Faculty and staff are nervous, too. Public universities across the state are laying people off at alarming rates. Chicago State University, the predominantly African-American school that has made national headlines lately for its rapid dismantling, laid off 300 employees this spring. A full 30 percent of its budget comes from the state; it now says it may not be able to open come fall if the impasse continues. Downstate, in the hamlet of Charleston, Eastern Illinois University has laid off 261 employees. Over in Macomb, at Western Illinois University, the number is 110.'"

For the ones who are not, to quote Yoda, "You will be, you will be." The state has no money, and is paying no bills. It is only a matter of time before this house of cards comes a tumbling down, probably triggered by the pension crisis. Once that happens it will be every man for himself, and universities will be simply cut loose to find their way on their own. It is highly unlikely that universities like Chicago State University will make this jump. They have a graduation rate of 12.8%, yet there is a strong likelihood that most of the drop outs took some amount of education debt. 

Higher education has become something of a Ponzi scheme where ever more poorer students are brought in for short periods of time to defray the expenses of the middle class students. These poor students leave saddled with debt and without any job prospect benefits. The university is looking more like public transit where huge costly improvements are undertaken to attract a few middle class patrons and to pay for those hugely costly improvements bus service to the poor is cut or reduced. This allows tax monies from all to be funneled to the middle class, and not the poor. The programs are feted, however, as primarily for the poor. 

Here at the End of History, progressives are making every attempt to shift wealth from the poor to the middle class. This is always the end game for all socialist models, but it does not end at the middle class, once the poor are reduced and consumed, so will be the middle class, and finally the upper middle class, and then the collapse. 

Illinois welcomes you to the End of History, you might want to take notes, this will be coming to your town, and soon. Choices will need to be made, chose wisely.