Five months ago, while seeking to set a course for Illinois State University against strong fiscal headwinds, President Aondover Tarhule said in his state of the university address that despite a series of challenges facing both ISU and higher education in general, he was "filled with confidence over Illinois State University's future."
"We have a long and proud history of adapting to change and emerging stronger from periods of disruption," he said at the time. "This moment will not be different."
That was in September, months before Donald Trump's presidential administration began issuing a series of executives orders that have the potential to fundamentally change the higher education landscape.
Since he took office Jan. 20, Trump has issued an executive order that opened all schools to immigration enforcement; the National Institutes of Health announced major reductions to research funding; the Office of Civil Rights in the Department of Education issued a "Dear Colleagues" letter saying that colleges and universities have 14 days to comply with a directive to remove race from most aspects of student life; and Trump issued an executive order banning transgender athletes from joining women's sports teams.
It's a flurry of change in an already unstable time for higher education: ISU, like other institutions, was already grappling with a projected demographic cliff, or drop in students, budgetary challenges and declining public trust in higher education at-large.
But in an interview with WGLT recently, Tarhule said he still believes higher education — and ISU — can weather the ongoing storm and, if not emerging unscathed, can at least emerge stronger than before.
You can listen to Part 1 of the interview above, and Part 2 below:
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
WGLT: We all know there's a lot of uncertainty right now. I wonder if you could speak to something that you are certain about — what is not going to change at Illinois State?
Tarhule: Our values are not going to change. I'm very committed that regardless of what comes at us, we have our core values. We have the things that make us Illinois State. We have the things that make people want to come here. We can't afford to compromise those. That includes our focus on individual student success, our sense of inclusivity, making sure that everyone that comes here feels valued and they belong here. There'll be a lot of change and we expect more to come, but our core values are core for a reason and we're going to continue to respect those core values.
WGLT: [Friday marks] a week since the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights issued that "Dear Colleagues" letter that said colleges and universities had 14 days... to get into compliance. They said that [colleges and universities] had to eliminate all aspects of race, whether that was from student life, academic life, et. cetera. How do you maintain those core values when there's a directive that threatens federal funding if universities continue to champion these values quite publicly in the way that they have?
Tarhule: A couple of things. Number one is the directive doesn't say, 'Don't respect your students' or, 'Have a divisive campus.' We know that those things are important to us as an institution and those are the things we're going to try to maintain within the law. The key thing is: What does the law say? If you read the letter itself, it's very difficult to follow. It's very complicated to follow. I think it's going to take awhile to parse it all out legally, operationally. That's what we're doing. We're trying to figure out how much of this is law, how much of this is an interpretation of somebody's read of the law. We will respect the law. The things that are not directly tied to law, but are somebody's interpretation of the law, we'll have some further analysis of what that means. We'll be law-abiding but we will also be very conscious and intentional about staying true to our values.
WGLT: Is it too soon to say what impact this would have on specific groups on campus that are dedicated to identity groups?
Tarhule: Yes, it's too soon. I've probably had maybe five or six different meetings this week, including with other presidents and chancellors, trying to understand what does it mean, what is targeted, what is not allowed. The letter says further guidance will be coming, so we're still waiting to see if we can get more specific guidance. The office of general counsel is doing its best, working in tandem with other offices of general counsel across the state to get a sense of the consensus of opinion about what this letter intends or is asking for.
How does it affect different groups on campus? The letter talks about, for example, different commencement ceremonies for different groups. It frowns at that and sees that as ongoing segregation within universities. The difference here is that groups are self-organizing. It's not the university. Any group of people can decide, 'Hey, we want to hold an event to celebrate our graduation.' You might say the university is supporting these things, but there's a difference between a university forcing different groups to have different events versus self-organizing. So what is the place of those types of self-organizing and decision-making in the context of what this letter is trying to accomplish? Those are the types of questions we still have to figure out.
WGLT: These new threats at the federal level to institutions for non-compliance come at a time where higher education itself was already under threat. There was already concern with higher costs, the demographic cliff, a decline in public trust in institutions generally. Do you perceive these threats to be existential? Are they that serious?
Tarhule: They are serious. Is it existential in the sense that do I think this will cause us to buckle under? No. Is it a lot to deal with? Yes. There's no question about that. There have been many other times in history where higher ed has faced many different challenges — maybe not all aligned to the same level of intensity as we're facing now. We're already seeing that even without the federal directives, budgets are causing some institutions to merge. Some institutions are rethinking how they offer their programs. But I think in the end, we're going to come out and be stronger for it.
Believe it or not — I'm not just saying that to be optimistic. I think we're going to come out stronger. These types of things when they happen suggest that the industry, higher education in this case, is somewhat out of step with either the economic realities that we face or the demands of our stakeholders. It highlights the fact that we need to adjust. If we can't adjust, then that's where the challenges become more severe. But if we adjust, then we're going to come out and be even stronger.
WGLT: [On Wednesday], the governor gave his State of the State and presented his budget. Do you feel a bit optimistic about an additional 3% appropriation to the overall higher education budget? I know historically ISU has gotten less in appropriations than other institutions.
Tarhule: Every little bit helps and 3% is greatly appreciated. It's better than nothing and it will help. I want to be grateful to the governor for making that gesture, especially at a time when we worried the overall state budget was considerably worse. Getting 3%, quite frankly, was almost a pleasant surprise. It's across the board, which means every institution is getting about the same 3% proportionally. Quite frankly, we thought we might be looking at zero, given the budget projections that were coming. 3% for us is a little under $2.4 million and that helps. This doesn't do anything for our historical inequity in the funding, but that wasn't the point, of course.
WGLT: A few months ago, we talked about the possible $8 million deficit that ISU would be in if there was no action taken. Thus far, work has gotten underway with an external consultant who's going to help budget modeling, there's been a task force that's convened several times, there's ongoing town halls. More specifically, can you speak to where that number stands now? Has there been progress made to reduce that figure?
Tarhule: It was $9 million for the fiscal year 2025 session. We're about halfway through that year. Our actions were supposed to pull us, if not entirely out of the deficit, close to it for the current year. So, that's an update I'm looking forward to receiving as we approach the half-year mark from the vice president for finance and planning. In fiscal year 2026, we'll have to look at the projections again to see where we stand. We'll be doing some things differently with that budget and that budget is going to be based on how we end up with respect to FY 2025, meaning those different actions we took. A lot of them are predictable: They involved pulling numbers back, pulling allocations or spending authorities from different units. I have no concerns about those. There were some that we don't have much control over, like filling back vacancy positions, or out-of-cycle increases. That's where we need to look at the degree to which the campus as a whole was able to follow through with the estimates and the projections that we made. I expect to get an update in the next few weeks.
WGLT: Are you optimistic?
Tarhule: If we execute as well as hoped, we should be pretty close to wiping out the deficit in FY 25. The problem is not a one-year deficit; it's a continuing problem. You wipe out one year's deficit but next year, unless you are able to align your expenses to your revenues, you're still going to have a deficit. That's what I worry about.
Here's the problem we have: Classically at ISU, we don't budget revenues. We budget expenses — meaning every year we allocate the same amount of money to departments that they got last year, regardless of what our revenues are. Nobody works like that. You don't plan like that. I don't budget based on my expenses; I budget based on what I think my income is going to be.
What we need to do is to move the university to the point where at the beginning of the year we say, 'What do we think our revenue is going to be next year?' And then that's what we allocate. That means we may not be able to satisfy all the expenses that we want to do, but we've got to prioritize which ones we think are mission critical, and those are the ones we support with a proper process. We don't have a reasonable mechanism for doing that. This is what Grant Thornton is going to help us do. Hopefully, in a year or two — hopefully less than two — we have a new budget model that is a lot more systematic, prioritized, and has clear guidelines and criteria about how we allocate scarce resources. This is the challenge.
WGLT: Faculty have gone increasingly public with dissatisfaction with how negotiations have gone over the past year [and with] their calls for potentially striking. It does seem to be materially more of a possibility than, say, several months ago. What are your thoughts on that given that this is a tough time for the institution, but the institution is an amalgamation of all of its people and faculty are a significant group that are critical to keeping that mission going forward?
Tarhule: My wish is that we continue to negotiate in good faith. As you've said, we're in tough times. We have big challenges to face all around us, internal and external. We can't afford to ignore any one of those. The most important thing here is that we all negotiate in good faith and keep the conversations about negotiations where they are. I'm not privy to the negotiations, and I'm not supposed to be, so I'm making just general comments that my hope is that we all negotiate in good faith, given the very tense moments that we're in, the very challenging moments that we're in. I hope that both groups reach an agreement that we can all live with. Given where we are, and some of the challenges we see in other institutions, I hope we all stay pragmatic and keep the big picture in view and keep the heart of the institution as the primary importance.
