Editorial: Rauner presents worthwhile recommendations

By Daily Illini Editorial Board

On Wednesday, Governor Bruce Rauner will give the annual State of the State address, and he previewed what he will say when he visited Champaign last Thursday.

Rauner takes over a state in very bad shape, and a state that has a bad recent history of helping the University. Last week, we talked about how new Board of Trustees chairman Ed McMillan and Governor Rauner’s history can help improve the state’s relationship with the University.

Thursday’s speech showed a positive trend developing. In his speech, Rauner highlighted a four-step plan to help improve the University and its relationship with the state.

For today’s editorial, we decided to go step-by-step through his recommendations and offer brief commentary of our take. Overall, the suggestions seem like no-brainers, and we hope the state and University are able to work these recommendations out.

1. Adjusting faculty and research compensation — Rauner said the University needs to raise pay to help attract the best faculty possible. We couldn’t agree more. Faculty are the backbone of this University, and, in order to have the best students, we need the best teachers and researchers to lead the way.

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2. Reducing administration bureaucracy to cut overhead costs — If the University thinks that this is possible without sacrificing quality, we think this would be very helpful. As students, it’s difficult navigating the administration and finding which specific unit to go to. If enough administrative costs were cut, it could potentially pay for the other suggestions offered by Rauner.

3. Continuing to freeze tuition to maintain competitiveness — The extremely high cost of attending the University prices out many students, and as a result, we lose out on many valuable, driven and worthwhile students to other schools. If we truly want the best for the entire state, low- and middle-income students should be able to afford to go here, and our tuition rates should be more comparable to some of our competitors.

4. Expanding the University’s footprint in engineering and applied sciences throughout the state — The University has so much knowledge, so much research and so much potential to help the state, and it would be nice to see the cutting-edge technology help the people of Illinois. The more of a footprint the University has, the more people will be able to see the positive impact it can have.

As we stated, Rauner’s suggestions seem like no-brainers — if all goes well and according to plan, these missions could help the well-being of faculty and students as well as the University and state as a whole. However, every good intention has room for error, but we hope to see this four-step plan go off without a hitch.