Springfield must pass Public University Funding Act | Letter Merrill Cole
- lindathelibrarian
- May 18
- 1 min read
Special to the McDonough County Voice Updated May 15, 2026, 5:19 p.m. CT
Western Illinois University is the most underfunded public university in Illinois.
According to Advance Illinois, WIU currently gets less than half the state funding needed to serve its students. The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, however, is funded at nearly 90% adequacy.
The gap is no accident, but the result of a funding system that has never been based on equity or student need, but only on political momentum and flat percentage increases applied equally to the well-funded and the underfunded alike.
Senate Bill 13 and House Bill 1581, the Adequate and Equitable Public University Funding Act, would change this. The bill would direct new funding to the universities furthest from adequacy first.