<p>[Higher-ups</a> called shots on clout list: U. of I. official: Admissions at times overruled](<a href=“http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-u-of-i-commission-17-jun17,0,3385104.story]Higher-ups”>Higher-ups called shots on clout list):</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I would doubt it is any different at most universities.</p>
<p>This was front page news in the Chicago Tribune for a week running a couple weeks ago. No surprises there - this is business as usual in Illinois. There are cars driving around here with bumper stickers reading “Our governors make our license plates.” I would expect that the politically connected, or those who “pay to play,” are getting their undeserving kids into U of I. I’m sure it happens at lots of schools, and I have no problem when it happens at a private school, but it shouldn’t be happening at UIUC.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I find this fascinating. I suspect a lot of people feel the same way, but why is that? Why is behavior that is casually tolerated as “business as usual” in the private world regarded as “corruption” in the public world? It’s not as if private colleges and universities don’t also benefit from gazillions of dollars in direct and indirect public subsidies including tax-deductibility of contributions, billions in federal research grants, federally guaranteed and/or federally subsidized student loans, federal and state financial aid grants that allow colleges to charge commensurately higher tuition, exemption from property taxes, in some cases tax-exempt bonding authority, and on and on. Yet no doubt it’s true that the exercise of “clout” by the well-connected gets many a lackluster candidate admitted to private schools who otherwise wouldn’t stand a chance, and no one raises an eyebrow. Yet if the school receives, in addition to the aforementioned subsidies, a direct appropriation from the legislature—no matter how trivial relative to the school’s total budget—the very same behavior is regarded as a betrayal of the public trust. </p>
<p>Frankly I think it’s outrageous in either context. My guess is most people just don’t have any inkling how heavily the pubic trough subsidizes private colleges and universities; and at the same time, many people vastly overestimate how much legislative appropriations contribute to the operations of our leading public universities, incorrectly assuming the State U is simply a taxpayer-funded administrative arm of the state like the Highway Patrol or the Department of Transportation. The truth is, both are hybrid public-private enterprises, the only difference being the direct legislative appropriation which in the case of some leading publics may amount to less than 10% of operating costs. And with state governments rapidly de-funding public universities, the line between the two gets fuzzier with every passing year.</p>