Speeches and statementsTestimonyPresident B. Joseph White Thank you, Chairman Chico, and members of the Task Force for the opportunity to speak with you this evening. We are all stakeholders in maintaining the excellence of Illinois’ education system. Our schools, colleges and universities hold the keys to Illinois’ future and the future of our children. Let me begin with two overarching thoughts. First, the world — the entire world — is bifurcating into two kinds of people: those who have bright prospects because they have a good education, are motivated, and live in a good political and economic system; and those whose prospects are dim because one or more of these conditions doesn’t pertain. We in America and Illinois are blessed with the world’s greatest democracy and free enterprise system. Motivation is up to each of us. But a quality education is what we must provide to our citizens for them and our state to have a bright future and navigate this extraordinary period of economic transformation. Second, I want to emphasize that for the educationally well-prepared, the future can be bright indeed. We know that a quarter of the U.S. workforce will be retiring in less than a decade. So while young people are worried, “Can I get a job?” employers are deeply concerned about whether they will have the qualified people they need to get the work of their organizations done in the years ahead. Education — a good, solid education from pre-school through graduate school — is the intersection of these two concerns. We simply must, in the state of Illinois, have high educational standards and schools at every level that can enable students to meet these standards. Let me spend just a minute telling you about how we are striving to do our part at the University of Illinois. The U of I — in Urbana, Chicago and Springfield — is an essential element in creating a bright and positive future for the people of Illinois. We are the beneficiaries of almost 140 years of wise planning and generous funding by the generations of Illinoisans who preceded us and built a great university. Now it’s our turn. For several months now I have been leading the creation of a strategic plan for U of I in the next decade and beyond. Inspired by Daniel Burnham, we are making “no little plans.” Despite a sea change in the funding of our great public university, in which state support has gone from paying nearly all the bills in the past to serving as the margin of excellence and access today, the theme of our strategic plan is “Creating a Brilliant Future for the University of Illinois.” There is simply no other aspiration worthy of an institution of Nobel Prize winners in Urbana, a student body in Chicago so diverse that no single group represents a majority, and a Springfield campus that aspires to be the best, human scale, public liberal arts university in America. We have defined the mission of the U of I as transforming lives and serving society by educating, creating knowledge, and putting knowledge to work on a large scale and with excellence. We have a vision to be the recognized leader nationally among public research universities in teaching, research, the arts, public service, and athletics. Strategically we intend to add to the academic excellence for which we are well known an unprecedented commitment to innovation, quality and service so that our students and others with whom we interact won’t just respect the U of I; they’ll love being members of our community and doing business with us. Aiming high in our aspirations and plans is a necessary condition for the U of I to have a brilliant future. But it’s not sufficient. We will also need the resources required for excellence and excellence doesn’t come cheap. So we need to forge a new Compact for the University of Illinois. The compact is a vital agreement among five parties that each will do its part to provide the resources required to maintain and develop our great public university. The five parties are the state of Illinois, tuition payers and their families, our own faculty through their success in attracting funded research, private donors, and the leadership of the University which is committed to tough-minded resource reallocation as a way of life, through good times and bad. As a part of this Compact, the University of Illinois is committed to enabling individuals to transform their lives through education and to being a powerful economic engine for our state. We are well-positioned to do this since educated people and the knowledge created by research are the new, true wealth of nations — and states and cities — in the global economy. Our strengths in agriculture, education, engineering, health care, public policy and science, to name a few, are renowned and benefit Illinois immensely. In concluding, I want to note that I see education seamlessly: not pre-school versus K-12 versus higher education, but rather as an integrated whole. In this spirit, I want to note three examples of how the U of I is already partnering with Illinois’ K-12 schools to help achieve excellence in education in Illinois:
These are only examples. There is much more being done at the U of I and much more to be done by all of us. The work is vital. Nothing less than our children’s futures and our state’s prospects and prosperity are at stake. Thank you for the opportunity to share my thoughts with you and for your service on this Task Force. |
