An IBHE spokesman visited Eastern for the second time, bringing up issues the Illinois Board of Higher Education has been dealing with and will deal with in the coming months.

Jonathan Lackland, the deputy director for advancement, external and governmental relations, said the primary issue for IBHE, as well as the many institutions in the state, is retaining funding and keeping the budget stagnate or even have increases.

Last year, IBHE received flat funding in fiscal year 2012 and Lackland said he hopes to see it again.

“Over the past decade, state appropriations for higher education, so operations and grants, has decreased from the all-time high of $2.4 billion in (fiscal year) 2002 to less than $2 billion in (fiscal year) 2014,” Lackland said.

This excludes the retirement and pension plans.

Situating the budget for this year, Lackland said, would take a four-step process ending with an expected 6.3 percent increase in the overall budget. This increase would make up for decrease in federal dollars lost previous years.

“We are hoping for no more cuts because we just can’t sustain them,” Lackland said.

He said it is important they justify what makes higher education so important. Lack of funding might cause a decrease in students in the state. Students might seek education in other states and maybe even work in those states, Lackland said.

The Board will vote on the budget this coming Tuesday to send to Gov. Pat Quinn. The final approval of the budget is expected to be finished in May.

Aside from stressing the need for limited to no budget cuts for IBHE’s budget, Jonathan Lackland, the deputy director for advancement, external and governmental relations also talked about a bill, the state authorization reciprocity agreement, IBHE is still finalizing.

This bill would provide a more simple standardized way to provide online courses in other states. Currently, if these institutions wish to provide education to other states, they must pay a fee in each state as well as follow the separate laws, which dictate each state.

With this agreement, they would be able to provide these online courses for one flat rate to students in states who already have an agreement with the bill and would not have to deal with the laws of each state. Lackland said there would be a uniform policy regarding these courses and programs and it will help tremendously in cutting state authorization costs.

The idea behind the bill has become a movement throughout the states wit many working on changing policies regarding institutional authorization in the state, Lackland said.

He also brought up a bill, which has been under IBHE watch since State Representative Linda Chapa LaVia introduced it on Jan. 22. The advanced placement exam-credit bill will mandate public universities and colleges have to accept students who have a score of three or higher on the College Board Advanced Placement.

“The institutions argument is we already have a policies in place. It is this statutory mandate that in a lot of people’s estimations is useless because the state institutions are already doing it,” Lackland said.

Lackland said much of the interest in this bill comes from other states doing it. He added many institutions want to be trusted in providing a standard and handling it without government regulation deciding how it should be.

“The ultimate question is: is this needed and the answer is no,” Lackland said.

Jarad Jarmon can be reached at 581-2812 or jsjarmon@eiu.edu.