Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1978 [PAGE 59]

EXTRACTED TEXT FROM PAGE:

48

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

[September 15

MINUTES APPROVED

The Secretary presented for approval the press proofs of the minutes of the Board of Trustees meetings of March 17 and April 14, 1976, copies of which had previously been sent to die Board. On motion of Mr. Livingston, these minutes were approved as printed on pages 543 to 608 inclusive.

BUSINESS PRESENTED BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY President's Reports

President CorbaUy presented a report on selected topics of current interest, copies of which were distributed at the meeting, and a copy was filed with the Secretary of die Board.

Statement Concerning FY 1977 Budget Reductions

President Corbally presented the following statement concerning FY 1977 budget reductions:

We are today two and one-half months into FY 1977, and each day of this fiscal year continues to illustrate and to magnify the inequities suffered by our faculty and staff due to the reduction by Governor Walker of 44 percent of the salary increase funds appropriated by the General Assembly to the University of Illinois. As our people are told that 2.5 percent is all that Illinois can afford for them, they see salary increases in many hard-pressed public agencies in Illinois at the 5, 6, or even higher percent level. They observe negotiated wage and salary settlements in the private sector at levels of 10 and even 15 percent, and they realize that they will share in paying for all of these increases from their 2.5 percent increases. They read that inflation is reaching new low levels, and they are expected to welcome the news that these new low levels are only two and one-half or three times the level of their salary increases. Our faculty reads about or hears of salary increases at institutions of lesser distinction than ours which are three times those provided for them, and they wonder if the Illinois commitment to quality has become imaginary rather than the real and living commitment it once was. I have read in Illinois newspapers that people such as I -— representatives of "special interests" as the Governor and others choose to call us — must realize that the average Illinois citizen does not care about quality higher education and that our task is, to paraphrase a bit, to "take what we are given and to be content." But I find many average Illinois citizens who do care — parents who want their children to be able to stay in Illinois and to attend at low cost one of the finest universities in the world; alumni who are concerned about the quality of their academic degrees, a quality which is always at least partially dependent upon the current status of their alma mater; small businessmen who depend upon the University of Illinois for advice and for graduates, both of which they expect to be of the highest quality; and farmers who count upon their land-grant university to educate their children and to provide expert counsel in the production and marketing of their crops and livestock. Even the people in the media, some of whom ask us to desist in our efforts to secure adequate funding, are horrified when lack of funding leads us to the necessity of considering cutbacks in programs related to their interests. Public education is not a "special interest"; it is one of the fundamental broad public interests in our democratic society. The General Assembly this past session was aware to an exceptionally high degree of the fiscal problems facing the state of Illinois. Appropriations decisions related to higher education were made by the General Assembly after the most thorough consideration which has been given to our requests — requests which also had the support of the Board of Higher Education — during my six years of ob-