Students graduating soon from Illinois universities are the first rats deserting a sinking ship.

This actually isn’t a bad thing, in this case. In fact, as far as Illinois higher education is concerned, it is perhaps the best time to be a fleeing rodent.

As public universities all over the state continue to reel from lawmakers’ complete ineptitude and inability to pay bills on time, it is the soon-to-be college students who could soon see their educational prospects falling ever further into despair.

The state of Illinois currently owes more that $840 million to state schools. With the state facing more than $13 billion state budget deficit and Gov. Pat Quinn threatening to cut nearly $1.3 billion from higher education funding unless lawmakers vote to increase income taxes from 3 percent to 4 percent, it would seem that hope is the only commodity Illinois colleges have left.

And even that may be dwindling soon.

An article in the March 22 edition of the Times-Courier/Journal-Gazette, said “Some public universities in states with relatively strong economies have made clear they would like to hire away other schools’ best teachers.”

In fact, the University of Texas set aside $3 billion for the purpose of luring top educators away from such sinking ships as our state.

That’s right, students; your professors may soon be little more than intellectual mercenaries.

Granted, teaching is like any other profession, the goal of which is to make a lucrative living by molding young minds.

However, it may soon be less a matter of schools competing for the best teachers and more an issue of entire states grabbing at top educators.

Like academic vultures picking the best meat off a dying animal, financially strong states may soon be coming after our schools. Illinois colleges are to become the carrion on which other states’ students feed.

To make matters worse, schools such as the University of Illinois have already said classes may increase in size by as much as 20 percent this fall.

It would seem that Quinn and state legislators have ceased trying to fix the problem of funding our universities at all costs and focused their energies on shifting the responsibility around like a hot potato.

Quinn will cut funding if legislators do not increase income tax. State legislators will not vote to increase said tax unless the governor finds other areas to cut funding.

And all the while, Illinois lawmakers keep using the excuse that even such an economic catastrophe, Illinois schools are still strong enough to bring in students, like picking food up off the ground and trying to assure themselves that “It’s still OK!”

It is time to stop making excuses, stop blaming one another and get the job done.

The people who will truly suffer are incoming college students, young adults whose education will be picked clean off the bone by other states and left dying on the side of the road by politicians who are too busy bickering and sitting comfortably behind their desks with the college degrees hanging securely on the wall behind them.

Unless legislators find a way to do the impossible and stop pointing fingers soon, Illinois college students’ best bet may be to move to another state.

Apparently Texas’s higher education is doing quite well.

Eastern will soon receive approximately $3 million in stimulus funding from the federal government.

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