To the students of the University of Illinois:

Welcome to the new school year. Within the last year, there has been an admissions scandal, a graduate student strike over tuition waivers, and incoming students have been charged $901 more per year.

Class sizes have risen, U of I’s rank has gone down, and buildings on the quad have been neglected and are currently falling apart.

These decreases in the quality of education follow a trend – corruption.

As quality has decreased, the extravagant lifestyles of the administration have gone untouched. On the same day the University hiked tuition, they also raised the new President’s salary by $170,000.

It now totals $620,000 per year.

He also has received a mansion in Urbana, a condo in Chicago and two country club memberships. Because of the budget crisis, workers in building service and food service have faced frozen wages for three years.

Why are students and workers cutting back if our President is not?

Last week, David Olsen, our student body President, wrote an Op-ed praising President Hogan for leadership and ability to “make tough decisions to enhance our strategic position as a world-class University.”

What? This is also a student who stood out alone against the Senate Executive Committee when they unanimously voted to close the Academy on Capitalism and Limited Government. The school was created to teach free-market ideals in opposition to the “left-wing bias” of the Liberal Arts and Sciences. Hogan should make a tough decision for himself and give up his pay raise.

You don’t have to be a communist to see that the problem with public education today is that universities act like businesses, seeing students as revenue generators rather than as human beings. It’s time for change.

Ben Rothschild and Jesse Hoyt,

Undergraduate-Graduate Alliance