Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1974 [PAGE 563]

EXTRACTED TEXT FROM PAGE:

1974]

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

553

several formal statements of institutional mission, objectives, and plans. The first of these statements, the Provisional Development Plan, was approved in principle and for transmittal to the Illinois Board of Higher Education by the Board of Trustees on September 16, 1970, By the spring of 1972, both the staff of the Illinois Board of Higher Education and the staff of the University of Illinois had agreed that the principles and the procedures introduced by the IBHE staff to prepare the operating appropriations requests for FY 1972-73 left much to be desired. Executive Director's Report No. 104 recognized that all sectors of Illinois higher education "are mutually anxious to avoid the problems and the constricted timetable which hampered FY 7i deliberations." More specifically, it stated: The systems have been asked to provide their separate plans for approaching FY 74 budget decisions. We will work to coordinate their responses to effect uniform development and review procedures. We are determined that the next several months be dedicated to institutional system and statewide planning, encouraging the priority and program evaluation activity to be done at the campus and system level. In response to the IBHE staff's request, the University suggested that several general issues be considered before the guidelines for the planning of succeeding appropriation requests were formulated, including the establishment of a basic fiscal frame of reference for institutional and IBHE staff planning, the assessment by each institution (and by the IBHE staff) of the impact of the budget limitations for the biennium 1971-73 upon the individual institutions and upon the entire system of higher education, the updating and further refinement of statewide enrollment projections for each campus, and the examination of the basic planning assumptions regarding scope and mission for the various institutions. In its commentary upon the recommendations in Executive Director's Report No. 10.3 for the elimination or sharp curtailment of some of its educational programs, the University indicated that its unwillingness or inability to accept most of those recommendations stemmed in large measure from fundamental disagreements with what appeared to be the assumptions underlying them. It seemed clear then, and the IBHE staff subsequently agreed, that the apparent conflict between Report No. 103 assumptions and the Master Plan-Phase III and other IBHE policy statements concerning the University's scope and mission had to be resolved as a prerequisite to effective communication and cooperation between the Board of Higher Education and the University of Illinoisin future planning. The first item in Report No. 104 addressed this point directly in acknowledging that "Campus master plans at senior, junior, and private institutions need systematic revision to bring these plans into full concurrence with MP-tll, especially as it relates to scope and mission and inter institutional planning." The University commented in response to that observation that: ...in the light of the discussion above concerning the relationship of MP-III to the University of Illinois, that there is considerable ambiguity or indeterminacy in MP-III regarding that document's "basic planning assumptions" for the various institutions. Many as]>ects of Master PlanPhase III have not been defined operationally, and frequent disagreements have arisen between the IBHE staff and institutional representatives regarding the interpretation of MP-III. (University of Illinois Commentary on Executive Director's Report No. 103, p. 57) During later discussions between the IBHE staff and the staff of each public higher education system, it was agreed that the initial step toward accomplishing an operational definition of MP-III would he the preparation by each institution of a statement of its conception of the scope and mission assigned to it and of the corollary basic planning assumptions. As these institutional statements were being developed, conferenceswere held by the IBHE staff at each campus in May, 1972, to explore the critical issues that might have emerged prior to the adoption of MP-III and since then, for the purpose of achieving better mutual