Chicago City Wire

Chicago State University (CSU) has the highest administrator-to-student ratio of any Illinois public university, according to the Illinois Policy Institute.

While public higher education institutions face a crisis that many have attributed to the state’s budget impasse, Ted Dabrowski, the institute's vice president of policy, and policy analyst John Klingner attribute the universities’ problems instead to institutional issues, such as high administrative costs, which grew 31.1 percent across the state between 2004 and 2010.

CSU is a prime example of this, the writers argue. In 2011, the state hit an administrator-to-student ratio of 1-to-45, but CSU reached 1-to-18, which Dabrowski and Klingner note is nearly the same as the school’s faculty-to-student ratio of 1-to-16.

Chicago State University Interim President Dr. Rachel W. Lindsey | https://www.csu.edu/president/presidentbio.htm

At the time, the school was in the midst of a decade of tuition growth, which rose by 77 percent between 2006 and 2016, hitting $11,758. Tuition growth has helped Illinois’ public universities try to cover costs but has also prevented low-income students from enrolling, the authors say.

According to the report, a lack of state funding is not to blame for the universities’ shortfalls; instead, it's the distribution of those state funds. Pension costs for retired state university workers have risen astronomically, to the point that the majority of state funding for higher education now goes toward retirement costs.