An equitable, sufficient, and stable funding system would:

• Provide equitable funding so that students can receive the best educational experience and succeed at whichever institution they attend. Illinois needs a funding system for higher education that supports equitable access, progression, and timely completion and accounts for the robust student support services (counseling, advising, wellness, bridge, mental health and child care supports, to name a few) that help students get to and through completion. Students should have equitable access to institutions, and institutions should have resources necessary to provide students the supports that enable them to succeed. Inequitable resources available to community colleges resulting from over-reliance on property taxes must also be recognized and addressed.


• Support a thriving postsecondary system that enriches the state and its residents. Illinois depends on higher education to preserve, expand, and transmit knowledge, offer solutions to society’s challenges, serve as a civic partner, produce well-educated residents, and enrich life. Research at our institutions expands our understanding of the social and physical world, enhances the health and wellbeing of our residents, and drives innovation and economic development in our communities. Educating students in the humanities and liberal arts supports the whole student and ensures that the leaders of the future better understand the human condition. Institutions are vibrant anchors of communities. In short, the postsecondary system enables students to better build knowledge, create wealth, and be civically engaged. Illinois’ higher education funding system should support these values and goals.


• Fund institutions sufficiently to achieve student, institutional, and state goals. Illinois must provide sufficient (i.e., adequate or full) funding necessary to achieve the state goals set out in the higher education strategic plan, for each institution to fulfill its mission, and to support students in achieving their goals. For the higher education system to deliver on these expectations, we must ensure that institutions are funded to do so.


• Ensure affordability for all students. The funding system should ensure that students can start and complete college and access a career of their choice without excessive student debt. This means tuition must be affordable. To do so the funding system must recognize the interrelationship among federal student aid, state funding for public universities and community colleges, state need-based (MAP grants) and other student aid, tuition, local property taxes, and capital appropriations. Our funding system should ensure that college is affordable for the most vulnerable students in the state.


• Recognize institutional uniqueness. A value of the state’s higher education system is its diversity of colleges and universities, each with different missions, yet all working in concert to serve the state. This calls for a funding system that recognizes these different missions and accounts for variation in institutional portfolios that serve the state (e.g., returning adult students, first-generation students, graduate and professional training, health care provision, research, community engagement, etc.).


• Provide predictability, stability, and limited volatility Students and families need predictability to plan for college. Institutions need predictability and stability to build and maintain programs and services that effectively support students. Funding should not dramatically fluctuate from year to year and the funding pattern should provide plenty of time for short- and long-range planning.


• Include a “hold-harmless” provision. In an environment where public institutions are insufficiently funded, the funding system should build toward sufficient funding without reducing current state appropriations to any institution.


• Support accountability. A Thriving Illinois includes a call for an accountability plan, with a set of measures to ensure that the state is making progress toward the goals of closing equity gaps, increasing attainment to meet the state’s talent needs, and improving access and affordability. The funding system should support accountability.


• Support a collaborative higher education system. Students are well served by having access to this rich higher education ecosystem that provides multiple ways to enter, transfer, and successfully exit the system throughout their career (and life). The funding system should reinforce the interconnectedness of the higher education system and support student success within and across institutions, especially as new, innovative networks, collaborations, partnerships, and consortia are developed.


• Encourage partnerships outside higher education. Partnerships are vital to a strong higher education ecosystem. The higher education system should seek to build partnerships, such as with businesses, non-profits, the philanthropic community, the federal government, and regional, national, and international collaborations that have a vested interest in a flourishing higher education system in Illinois. The goal is to reinforce support for this crucial public good in the state.


• Articulate rationale for public support. A transparent funding system should point the system toward meeting individual, institutional, and state goals. A funding system that fulfills the principles outlined above makes the case for public support.