SPRINGFIELD – Gov. JB Pritzker got some of what he requested from the General Assembly in the area of higher education, but some of his biggest requests fell short.
Pritzker’s wins include a $10 million increase in need-based student financial aid and passage of a direct admission program to make it easier for eligible Illinois high school and community college students to apply to public universities.
But lawmakers did not approve the overall funding increase that Pritzker requested at the start of the session, settling on a 1% bump in their operational budgets instead of the 3% the governor proposed, Pritzker’s office, however, has said there are contingencies to provide an additional 2% in the event of significant cuts in federal funding.
They also did not pass other major higher education policy initiatives, including Pritzker’s plan to allow community colleges to offer four-year bachelor’s degrees in certain high-demand career fields, and a long-sought overhaul in the way Illinois funds its public universities.
“You don’t get everything done in one year,” Pritzker said during a post-session news conference when asked about several of his initiatives that failed to pass this year. “Sometimes they (lawmakers) spend two years, four years, six years, trying to get something big done.”
Community college proposal
In his State of the State address in February, Pritzker called for allowing community colleges to offer baccalaureate degrees as a way of expanding access to those programs, especially for older, nontraditional students who may not live close to a four-year university.
“With lower tuition rates and a greater presence across the state — especially in rural areas — community colleges provide the flexibility and affordability students need,” Pritzker told the General Assembly. “This is a consumer-driven, student-centered proposal that will help fill the needs of regional employers in high-need sectors and create a pathway to stable, quality jobs for more Illinoisans.”
In the legislature, however, the proposal ran into stiff opposition from several sources, including universities that said the plan lacked sufficient safeguards to prevent community colleges from offering duplicative programs that would siphon prospective students away from their campuses.
Amid that opposition, House Bill 3717, which was carried by Rep. Tracy Katz-Muhl, D-Northbrook, failed to advance out of a key committee before a mid-session deadline in March. And even after amendments were negotiated that led to universities dropping their opposition and the bill was reassigned to a different committee, it still failed to gain enough traction to advance to the House floor.
That was mainly due to opposition from the Legislative Black Caucus, whose members said it still posed a threat to the three universities in Illinois that serve primarily Black and Latino students — Chicago State University; Governors State University, and Northeastern Illinois University — which are all located in the Chicago metropolitan area alongside multiple community colleges.
“Chicago State is hemorrhaging,” Rep. Curtis Tarver, D-Chicago, said during a May 23 House Executive Committee hearing. “And you all, as an administration, are handing them Band-Aids and they need stitches. And then you come in and you provide a bill that’s going to be even worse for them, with 11 community colleges within 25 miles of them. And I’m saying as we sit here that the Black Caucus has an issue with the bill.”
Funding overhaul
Another proposal that failed to advance called for establishing a new formula for funding public universities.
House Bill 1581 and its companion Senate Bill 13, known as the Adequate and Equitable Public University Funding Act, called for establishing a funding structure like the Evidence-Based Funding formula used for K-12 education.
That formula would use objective standards to determine an adequate level of funding for each university. The bills then called for adding as much as $1.7 billion in new funding for universities over the next 10-15 years, with most of the funding going toward schools furthest away from their adequacy target.
The proposal grew out of a commission formed in 2021 within the Illinois Board of Higher Education. That commission worked for nearly three years to develop a proposal and issued its report and recommendations to the General Assembly in March 2024.
Under the proposed formula, Western Illinois University in Macomb would have earned top priority for new funding because it is currently funded at only 46% of its adequacy target. Northeastern Illinois University and Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville, at 47% of adequacy, would have been next in line.
But the state’s flagship institution, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, currently at 89% of adequacy, would rank at the bottom of the priority list. For that reason, the U of I System opposed the plan.
“The University of Illinois System is absolutely dedicated to expanding equitable access, enhancing student success and promoting statewide economic growth,” Nick Jones, executive vice president and vice president of academic affairs for the U of I System, told a Senate committee in April. “The proposed legislation penalizes institutions that provide the most support for underrepresented and rural students while failing to ensure long-term access.”
Senate Majority Leader Kimberly Lightford, D-Westchester, who sponsored the Senate bill and was a cochair of the study commission, said she was disappointed it did not pass this year, but vowed working for a more equitable funding formula.
“While it is far past time to pass an equitable funding model, I am reminded that many of the comprehensive plans I’ve passed have taken years of research, input and negotiations,” she said in an email statement. “This legislation is no different.”
Robin Steans, president of the education advocacy group Advance Illinois, who also served on the commission, said in a separate statement that she expects lawmakers to continue discussing the bill over the summer. Action could come during the fall veto session or early in the 2026 regular session, she said.
“Eventual adoption of the Adequate & Equitable Funding bill represents a significant change, one that requires new investment by our state in what remains the surest path to greater mobility and opportunity for Illinois families,” she said. “The questions and comments made during legislative committee meetings indicate that Illinois lawmakers get that, and powerful testimony from the state’s university leaders drove home the urgency of this issue.”
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