Offering a former Obama aide $30,000 for a commencement speech is the perfect example of how misguided spending is in Illinois, a conservative pundit said on Chicago-based radio talk show recently.
"The left is incredible," Pat Hughes, co-founder of the Illinois Opportunity Project, said on "Illinois Rising." "I know the right does this too, but the left is incredible. They're the ones who are talking about not funding our universities, and that we don't have a balanced budget, and nothing's getting funded, and we blame the bad Republican governor. And then this ostensibly high-end political hack, Valerie Jarrett, wants to get paid for, what, 40 minutes worth of saying stuff that, by the way, she's said a thousand different times. It's not like she's going to prepare a new speech. She's just going to get up there and do her standard shtick, and that's unfortunate."
Jarrett, who gave the May 8 speech at Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU), ended up waiving the fee after it was reportedly to be paid by an anonymous donor.
Hughes said the idea of paying someone thousands of dollars when a university education is outrageously expensive is ridiculous.
"And the reason why it has skyrocketed isn't because the education has gotten any better or because, 'Boy, the facilities are better than they've ever been,'" Hughes said. It's salaries and pensions of teachers, professors and administrators and people who work for the university. It's the incredibly high cost of contracts to prevailing wage, capital events and everything else."
Hughes, a Hinsdale attorney and real estate developer, is president of the Liberty Justice Center and co-founder with Dan Proft of the Illinois Opportunity Project. Proft is a principal of Local Government Information Services, which owns this publication.
In March, hundreds of NEIU student employees lost their jobs and almost all staff were forced to take five furlough days. In April, NEIU canceled three days of class only days prior to announcing a temporary shutdown and employee furloughing.
Meanwhile, NEIU's tuition increased by 112 percent between 2006 and 2015, and more than 53 percent of the state's spending on higher education is now devoted to pension costs. State spending on higher education operations fell by more than $150 million during the same period.
Hughes said costs at NEIU constitute "the same emotional manipulation and hostage taking" that occurs at the high school and elementary education property tax levels in Illinois, Hughes said.
"Parents are so fearful that their kid is not going to get properly educated at the grade school and high school, and now we're talking about at the college level, that they'll accept 115 percent tuition increases," he said.
But parents and students are not getting a good return on that investment, Hughes said.
"It's a scam where a bunch of players have gotten together," he said. "The ranking institutions, the public sector employees and the privates go along with it. But the parents can't get out of it because they say to themselves, 'I have to give my kid the opportunity, and this is the cost.'"
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