Tuition, fees rising at Illinois universities as state funding lags inflation pace

SPRINGFIELD – The cost to attend state universities has been rising, and some institutions have said they’ll have to continue pushing the brunt of state budget shortfalls onto students and families if there isn’t a change.

Data from the Illinois Board of Higher Education, which oversees public universities, shows university income has had to make up for the steady loss of funding from the state since around fiscal 2009 as compared with inflation.

Since that point, state investment hasn’t kept up with inflation, and tuition and fees have risen steadily despite the fact that Gov. JB Pritzker’s administration has regularly increased higher education funding. The fiscal 2026 proposed budget includes a 3% increase for higher education in the general fund for operating costs – which is about the same as the rate of inflation.

The cost of tuition and fees for statewide undergraduates on average has risen 10% higher since fiscal 2009 than if it had simply kept pace with inflation. For graduate students, that discrepancy is 16%.

The University of Illinois Chicago is the only school that has seen tuition and fees for both graduate and undergraduate students grow more slowly than inflation.

Administrators from many of the states’ universities have said they’re holding out hope that a new funding formula, contained in Senate Bill 13 and House Bill 1581, will alleviate some financial burden.

The formula as it is currently proposed would use data from the Illinois Board of Higher Education to determine how much money public universities would need on a per-student basis. University officials said the current system for allocating funds to universities isn’t quite as clear about determining why one university gets more funding than any other.

During a Senate appropriations hearing last week, state Sen. Michael Halpin, D-Rock Island, and Northern Illinois University President Lisa Freeman each supported a data-based funding formula over the current method.

Administrators for almost every public state university who have spoken to the same committee have said they need to keep asking for more money than what the governor proposed in order to fend off tuition and fee increases.

“We understand funds are more constrictive this year than in the recent past,” Eastern Illinois University President Jay Gatrell said during the committee meeting. “That said, we do have bills to pay, and we only have two real sources of revenue: state appropriations, which cover roughly one-third of our operating costs, and student tuition and fees, which cover the remaining two-thirds.”

During fiscal 2003, that breakdown was flipped – the state covered more than two-thirds of universities’ operating costs.

“No university really wants to increase tuition cost,” Corey Bradford, interim president of Governors State University said in an interview. “We do it in order to balance our budgets.”

The proposed funding formula hasn’t made its way through either chamber yet, though legislators generally have ways of moving major legislation beyond stated bill deadlines, up until end-of-May adjournment. If it doesn’t move, universities will continue being appropriated funds by standards set from years past.

“Even if there are differences in dollars per FTE [full time equivalency student] after we were to implement this formula, at least those differences would be grounded in this data in the program,” Halpin said. “Right now, we have these discrepancies, but there’s … not necessarily a hard data point, or set of data points, to justify it.”

MAP grants

In his February budget plan, Pritzker proposed increased funding of $10 million for Monetary Award Program grants for students to use toward tuition and fees, matching the same increase he made for the previous year’s budget.

MAP grants can go to any student who’s eligible for financial aid across the state. Pritzker’s proposed increase would make the new MAP grants pool total $721.6 million – up from $400 million when he was first elected in 2019.

However, MAP grants don’t directly fund universities the same way money from the general fund does.

“MAP goes to all colleges,” Bradford said. “Community colleges, private colleges, it doesn’t all come to public universities.”

University building projects

State Sen. Chapin Rose, R-Mahomet, asked every university president during recent committee hearings if their schools had received any funding for deferred maintenance projects on campuses for the current fiscal year.

Rose said no one has said “yes” yet.

“I think we’d like to know before we get to next year’s budget how we’re spending last year’s budget,” Rose said. The current budget year concludes on June 30.

Ginger Ostro, IBHE’s executive director, said the board is working with universities and meeting with them and the Illinois Capital Development Board to maintain lists about deferred maintenance projects and make sure funding is distributed.

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.