Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1940 [PAGE 188]

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1939]

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

185

It seems fair to say that few institutions are in a position to create a budget under more realistic conditions than those that prevail at the University of Illinois. With the estimates of the Deans and the facts from the Bureau before it, the Advisory Committee gave careful attention to the needs of each department of each division and to the pattern of the work of the University as a whole in its relation to the social service that must be rendered by the University. Most of the material on which the original operating budget was based has been examined again by the Advisory Committee. It is the judgment of the Advisory Committee that the biennial budget as proposed is a fair and reasonable translation into sums of money of the needs and necessary services of the University. The Committee wishes to reaffirm, therefore, its previous judgment regarding the total operating budget. The increase recommended by the Advisory Committee and approved by the University Council represents the amount that would be necessary to carry on an educational program coordinate with the needs of the State as expressed in the demands on the University. In recommending reductions in various items of the budget, the AdvisorjCommittee wishes to point out that its recommendations are made only with the earnest conviction that the University will be forced to carry on through another biennium at a level of excellence which is substantially below the educational standards which the University should aim to reach. It is true that the original recommendations of the Committee called for a relatively larger increase in operation than has been true of previous budgets. It should be pointed out, however, that the proposed budget for the 1937-1939 biennium also called for a relatively larger increase. What was left out of that budget has been included in the present budget. The point is that both budgets were the outcome of a detailed and realistic appraisal, not so much of hopes or theories as of stubborn facts regarding teaching operations, research, student advancement, public service, and the cultural welfare of the people. In submitting its concessions to the situation of the State Treasury, the Advisory Committee wishes to point out also that the major theme behind its previous recommendations was an increase in the quality rather than in the sheer quantity of the work being done by the University. There will, of course, be an increase in the quantity because of an increase in the number of students registered. In addition to this, however, the University of Illinois should improve the quality of its work by improving the quality of its staff, increasing its distinction in teaching and research, decreasing the size of its classes, rewriting many of its basic courses, adjusting other courses to the changing social order, and by bringing its students, especially at the freshman and sophomore levels, into a more realistic contact with the kind of life they must lead when they leave the University. The real question at issue here is not that the University has been adapting itself to a limited budget and therefore can continue a limited educational program; it is the question as to what value can be placed on better educated men and women. The suggestions of the Advisory Committee for reductions in the various items of the operating budget are as follows: A. For selective salary increases, $400,000, reduced to $250,000 This reduction can be justified only on the grounds that the teaching profession, like all other professions, must continue to adjust itself to prevailing economic conditions and to the other demands that are being made on State treasuries. B. For special salary recognition in teaching and research, $200,000, reduced to $150,000 This item was intended to meet salary demands over and above those that can possibly be met by item A. A reduction in this item will definitely handicap the President in his efforts to keep distinguished men who are already on the staff and in the increasingly difficult task of bringing other distinguished men to the staff.