Saturday, March 22, 2008

The Cost Of Corruption Adjustment

The Board of Trustees for the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign will meet on Wednesday to discuss tuition.

A proposal will be on the table to raise tuition. yet again. It would be a miracle if they voted the issue down.

The trustees would very much like us all to think of this State school as a quasi-private institution. It's Ivy League quality without leaving the Midwest. It's a prestigious university, and if they say it often enough, surely someone will believe it.

A prestigious institution requires a prestigious level of tuition, so if you want to attend UIUC, be prepared to come up with $9200 dollars per year, plus another $8K for a place to lay your weary head. That's a jump of 9.5 percent over this year, and you know that the cost of living hasn't climbed anywhere near that much in the last twelve months.

In a Chicago court room, Stuart Levine has been explaining how the fix was put in by his pal and handler, Tony Rezko. Shake-downs and bribes were paid for business, and those who were shaken down or bribed just passed the cost on to the State of Illinois.

Every student enrolled at UIUC is paying a portion of the graft. When the State has to pay a premium for ordinary expenses, someone has to cover the difference. There's only so much tax money to go around, and the university system comes up short. So what? Let the students make up the difference, while Rod Blagojevich's and Barack Obama's campaign chests are stuffed to overflowing with the profits of racketeering.

Thinking of sending a donation to a presidential candidate? If you're paying tuition at UIUC, you already have...in a roundabout way.

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