Since Rauner’s office started to disseminate false stories about our university closing, our enrollments dropped. It is understandable because if people see a news segment that shows our university and features interviews with our students who are saying, “I don’t know what I would do if the school closes”, they are wary of applying.
Please note how Rauner operates: he refuses to give us the money that the state owes us and simultaneously tries to rob us of the only remaining source of income, tuition money. We are pretty much the most self-sufficient of Illinois’s public universities. Our administration has come up with a way to keep the university afloat even when the state money doesn’t come our way. In response, Rauner singles us out for these lying reports aimed at destroying our self-sufficiency.
It is, of course, a lie of Rauner’s that he wants public schools to cost the state less. If that were true, he wouldn’t single out my university and try to destroy it. Remember how I told you about that visit from the director of the Illinois Board of Higher Education? He said very clearly that the residents of the state only needed 2 or 3 public schools to stay open. Everything else had to close or be converted into an online degree mill.
There are powerful interests whose stated goal is to destroy public higher education in this country. All of these news stories about evil, self-involved academics who produce unreadable and worthless research, about colleges promoting groupthink and squeezing out all diversity of political opinion, spoiled bratty students who run around with idiotic slogans instead of learning – all they do is try to manipulate you into a position that will help Rauner and his ilk to destroy public higher education. The schools with bratty students, and stuck up academics with outdated theory are not the ones needing public funding. Forget about them and turn your attention to us instead. We are doing good work and people like Rauner are trying to destroy us.
Clarissa's Blog 
Leave a comment