Trustees approve increase in student fees for 1995-96

By Ed Tate and John Camper, UIC News Bureau

Housing and meal rates and student fees for UI students at
Urbana-Champaign and Chicago will be going up slightly in
the next academic year.

University trustees, meeting at UIC on April 13, approved
proposed increases of 6.9 percent in the service and general
fees for UIC students and 6.6 percent for the same at Urbana-
Champaign. The greatest hike, 14.8 percent, was in the
student health fee at Chicago, while the same charge will
rise 1.6 percent at Urbana-Champaign.

Prior to the unanimous vote in favor of the fee and rate
hikes, student members of the committees on both campuses
that produced the proposals explained the process used to
incorporate student opinion in establishing student activity
budgets.

Housing rates at UIUC will increase from 3.5 percent for
undergraduate housing to 6.6 percent for graduate halls. At
UIC, residence hall rates will increase 2 percent; single
student residences will increase 4 percent next year.

Coupled with the 3.5 percent increase in tuition for most UI
students, the cost of attending either campus - depending on
their year in school - will rise 3.5 percent to 5.1 percent
for students in Chicago and, for students at Urbana-
Champaign, 3.5 to 5.4 percent.


A Framework for the Future
------------------------------
The high quality of the UI at Urbana- Champaign is "at
risk," Chancellor Michael Aiken told the UI Board of
Trustees on April 12.

Aiken made the comment as he and Provost Larry Faulkner
described the campus' strategic plan, "A Framework for the
Future," to the board's Academic Affairs Committee.

"This is one of the few institutions in the nation, of the
quality it has, that is funded by the public," Aiken said,
mentioning Michigan, Wisconsin-Madison and California-
Berkeley among the few state-supported universities in
UIUC's league.

"That is a great legacy," he said, "but that legacy is at
some risk at this point."

The risk results from uncertainties in funding and from
demographic and technological change, he said. The strategic
plan, he said, will help answer the questions: "How do we
maintain the quality of this institution and its faculty?
"What do we have to do to reinvigorate the mission of
teaching, research and public service?"

In response to a question from Trustee Ada Lopez, Aiken
acknowledged that the campus does not do as much as it
should to reward good teaching.

Campus policies call for taking teaching into account in
hiring, promoting and granting tenure to faculty, he said.
"Most of the standards are there," Aiken said. "We just
don't always live up to them."

He recalled recently receiving "a dossier on a person we
wanted to hire. There was not a word on what kind of teacher
he was."

Faulkner noted that the strategic plan calls for creating a
Teaching Advancement Board "to bring the same kind of
prestige to the teaching function that we've manifested for
the research function." He said he hoped the board would
raise private money to fund innovative teaching experiments.

Though most trustees praised the new report, Trustee William
Engelbrecht, R-Henry, complained that the document lacked
focus.

"I keep trying to look in here to find the strategy for the
university," he said. "What is it that the university wants
to do or become or evolve into? I couldn't find it here."


In other business ...
---------------------
Trustees approved "cost recovery" tuition and fee increases
for several UIUC programs, among them the executive MBA,
which will raise the total cost by 6.3 percent to $15,200
annually.

Contracts totaling $1.2 million for the Engineering
Quadrangle at Urbana were approved by the board, as was a
$2.1 million contract for repair and replacement of roofs on
several buildings.

Trustees approved a nearly $700,000 project to remodel the
third floor of the Roger Adams Laboratory for the
biochemistry department, and they approved a $350,000
increase in the Temple Hoyne Buell Hall project, raising the
cost to almost $14 million. They also approved a nearly
$113,000 increase in the cost of making renovations to
ClarkHall, most relating to compliance with the American
With Disabilities Act.

The board ratified spending $1.7 million in UIC College of
Medicine funds on the Molecular Biology Research Facility to
develop eight new laboratories in the building. The cost for
the Chicago project is now nearly $54 million.


Medical Center
-----------------
To cut costs, state officials want to move Medicaid patients
into managed care, so thousands of public-aid recipients may
be joining the UIC HMO, and that worries university
trustees.

But unless that moves takes place, UIC officials warn, the
current flow from Medicaid of about $50 million per year
could be imperiled.

If the state's Medicaid plan is put into effect, the UIC HMO
could see an increase in revenues from about $7 million per
year to perhaps $120-180 million as a result of enrolling
150,000 or more people from Medicaid, according to R.K.
Dieter Haussmann, vice chancellor for health services.

UI trustees expressed considerable concern about potential
financial exposure.

"I don't want to see the business operation putting the rest
of the university at risk," said Trustee Jeffrey Gindorf, D-
Crystal Lake.

UIC Chancellor James Stukel responded that administrators
are developing a plan to insulate the university's budget
from the HMO operation.

The expanded UIC HMO would be administered by Advocate
Health Care, the new entity formed by the merger of EHS
Health Care and Lutheran General.