The death of George Floyd made many privileged, white Americans reconsider the standard or default way of living. As a country, we re-examined our relationship with race and the legacy of slavery many are still healing from. White folks, myself included, began to think more critically about what it means to be genuinely anti-racist. This sentiment was prevalent nationwide as we all experienced a renewed national conversation about race. This attitude is reflected in many of the bills passed by the Illinois legislature following the summer of 2020.

One of the bills passed and signed by Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker created a commission to study and provide recommendations for an equitable funding formula for Illinois’ public institutions of higher education. Currently, our tax dollars are distributed to public universities based on how much they have received in the past and a few other variables, but there isn’t a transparent formula to standardize how we should distribute public tax dollars to the public universities. Critics argue the distribution of state funds to public universities should not be subjective. Not too long ago, Illinois developed, passed, and implemented a funding formula for the state’s K-12 institutions in an effort to drive state dollars to the schools that needed it most. Now, we are embarking on a journey to develop a similar formula for our public universities.

What does this have to do with race? Equity! Illinois is home to world-class universities with million-dollar endowments. Unfortunately, it is also home to universities struggling to keep the lights on in their classrooms. As you may have guessed by now, the universities struggling with funding issues are the universities predominantly serving minority, non-traditional, low-income, or BIPOC students.

Why equity? The focus on equity, as opposed to equality, can be nuanced and often not fully understood. Equality, in simple terms, means everyone is treated the same. In our case, equality would mean all public universities receive the same funding. This may seem reasonable on the surface, however, as we begin to pull back layers, we see this idea of ‘equality’ only serves to contribute to the disparities in university funding. For example, the University of Illinois, the state’s flagship university, has the highest number of students paying full tuition. Additionally, the school is blessed to have generous benefactors and alumni who actively maintain the school’s multi-million dollar endowment.

Conversely, the University of Illinois Chicago, Chicago State University, and Northeastern Illinois University are the only schools in Illinois considered Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs). These schools have the highest number of students receiving financial aid, the highest number of BIPOC students, and the largest population of non-traditional students, which are students who did not immediately enroll in college after high school. However, these schools often struggle with funding and capacity issues.

Is this status quo fair? Does it seek to dismantle systemic racism in higher education? Equity means that everyone is given what they need to succeed instead of everyone receiving the same thing. Put differently, the schools that need more money, receive more money.

YI Midwest is proud to be a member of the Coalition for Transforming Higher Education Funding. The central goal of the coalition is to keep equity at the forefront of any funding formula recommended to the Illinois General Assembly.

But this work requires you to join and take action. If you want to learn more about how to get involved, email me at hannah.keller@younginvincibles.org. I’d love to hear from you what equity on your campus would mean.

Hannah Keller is the Midwest Policy Manager for the Young Invincibles’ Midwest office. She oversees the higher education legislative portfolio for the office.