Two bits of news:
A. The state of Illinois refuses to honor its obligations as to funding a percentage of our university’s budget.
B. The state of Illinois has adopted a law that will prevent professors at public universities from getting published and advancing their careers as researchers. I guess the idea behind this is that students at public schools do not deserve to be taught by scholars. This definitely sounds like the final nail in the coffin of the public higher ed system. If professors can’t do research, there is no chance they will stay at such universities.
Clarissa's Blog 
What??? What is this Illinois law that prevents professors from publishing? I haven’t heard about this! Will this apply to all schools? How can this be? The University of Illinois system has some world reknowned research schools (i.e. UI Urbana, UI Chicago etc. etc.)
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The universities covered by the policy are: University of Illinois, Southern Illinois
University, Chicago State University, Eastern Illinois
University, Governors State University, Illinois State
University, Northeastern Illinois University, Northern
Illinois University, Western Illinois University
I promise to say a lot about this soon. I just discovered about this last night.
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I”m horrified. I bet my state will be next. 😦
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You know I’m not one to panic-monger. But this new law we’ve been told about is truly bad.
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// A. The state of Illinois refuses to honor its obligations as to funding a percentage of our university’s budget.
How is it explained? How is it legally possible?
Wait, do you live and work in the state of Illinois?
Can you get published or not? Is your university public?
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Yes, I’m in Illinois. My husband is in Missouri. We live together but work in different states. Mine is a state university, yes.
Our state has a new Republican governor. The president of the university told us yesterday that we will have to fire thousands of people and eliminate departments and programs to please the governor. Today I’m going to meet this president in person and hear what details he can offer.
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What? What is this law? How in hell can it be legal?
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A serious question: in this new liquid world, does USA still need good public education? Previously, if you wanted to be an empire, you had to educate and prepare some of your citizens for various roles. What now?
I don’t understand how such policies won’t harm American standing in the long run.
Just now I saw on an Israeli site an article about the criminal investigation concerning an American for-profit college. (Links below). If this college succeeded to “fraudulently obtain millions of dollars in federal money,” doesn’t it cost more and give less to the country than a public university on the whole? Also, you’ve written “If professors can’t do research, there is no chance they will stay at such universities.” Where will they go then? To colleges which use strippers?
LINK 1
Lawsuit: College Used Strippers to Lure Students
A for-profit Florida college used exotic dancers as admissions officers, falsified documents and coached students to lie on financial forms as it fraudulently obtained millions of dollars in federal money, according to a federal lawsuit filed in Miami.
On at least one of its seven campuses, FastTrain College “purposely hired attractive women and sometimes exotic dancers and encouraged them to dress provocatively while they recruited young men in neighborhoods to attend FastTrain,” according to an ongoing civil lawsuit. The Florida attorney general and the U.S. attorney in Miami announced Wednesday that they were joining the lawsuit against the now-defunct FastTrain and former owner Alejandro Amor, 56.
http://abcnews.go.com/Weird/wireStory/lawsuit-college-strippers-lure-students-27367115
LINK 2
The FBI raided campuses of Florida-based FastTrain College on Wednesday. The for-profit school has multiple ties to Representative Alcee Hastings (D-FL), who has been a fervent backer of for-profit education companies. This industry has lobbied Congress fiercely in recent years to avoid accountability for waste, fraud, and abuse at the expense of students and taxpayers.
http://www.republicreport.org/2012/alcee-hastings-for-profit-raided/
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Have you read the recent article by the BRILLIANT петрановская? Here is an excerpt:
She isn’t using the words “liquid society” or “post-nation state” but this is precisely the phenomenon I’m talking about. People around the world are conscious that some of us will radically advance our education and knowledge and some of us will fall off the fast-moving train of modernity.
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\\ Have you read the recent article by the BRILLIANT петрановская?
Never heard about her before.
Thank you for the link.
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She is a brilliant psychologist working in the area of children rights.
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“Where will they go then? To colleges which use strippers?”
– There is always an entire galaxy of the normal between any extremes.
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“I don’t understand how such policies won’t harm American standing in the long run.”
– Exactly. We are kicking ourselves off the train.
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If professors can’t do research, will they be forced to teach a huge number of courses?
Is the goal to pay less to professors?
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This is too scary. I knew a revolution in higher education was coming, but I didn’t know it was coming so fast. I’m guessing the people pushing this extreme cost-saving scheme in Illinois think college professors can be replaced by technology. Distance learning, internet-based higher education, and outsourcing.
I imagine state politicians will decide that the mission of public colleges and universities is to provide job credentials to the masses as cheaply and efficiently as possible, not to support research. Teaching the masses cheaply is the community college model. No reason it can’t be extended to four-year public institutions. (Even the concept of higher education for the masses is in doubt. Will the new economy need masses of well-educated workers? Possibly not.)
Why listen to a learned professor holding forth in an ivy-covered lecture hall, when you can watch the same lecture on YouTube in your pajamas?
If accounting firms can outsource preparation of income tax returns to accountants in India, colleges can outsource grading English 101 essays to teaching assistants in Bangladesh.
I’m not saying I’m in favor of this scary future. I understand that higher education will be reduced to the lowest common denominator. Many intangibles of learning will be lost. Students who want or need quality education will have to get it from private institutions, which will offer some student aid, but become more exclusive and removed from the masses.
Like Illinois, Maryland also elected a new Republican governor in November. If the Illinois project seems practical and popular, I’m sure Republican leaders in Maryland and many other states will be eager to jump on the bandwagon.
Thanks for alerting us to this development, Clarissa.
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