The president of Illinois State University said administrators "have work to do" to restore trust and respect among some university employees after contentious union negotiations and other ongoing contract talks.
Aondover Tarhule also discussed ISU’s enrollment and efforts to improve its graduation rate during an interview on WGLT’s Sound Ideas.
Union negotiations
There are several groups of unionized workers at ISU who say they want to see the university do more to repair relationships and trust. Representatives from several unions have complained publicly of drawn-out negotiations, underwhelming offers and a general feeling of disrespect in talks with supervisors or at the bargaining table.
Labor unrest has flared up across the ISU campus in recent years, with more organizing and several contentious negotiations with faculty and staff bargaining units. This spring ISU’s buildings, dining and food service workers went on strike for 27 days before reaching a contract. A year prior the university’s faculty union filed intent to strike before reaching an agreement on the day of the deadline.
Members of unions representing student support professionals and graduate teaching assistants, both currently negotiating new contracts, spoke during Friday’s ISU Board of Trustees meeting. Others spoke about faculty concerns with less-than-competitive pay and leadership changes across a number of disciplines.
“Obviously, we have work to do,” Tarhule told WGLT.
Tarhule acknowledged the campus climate following recent contract negotiations.
“I understand we have work to do to try to rebuild trust, respect, and to get back to a stronger sense of shared understanding of our collective destiny as an institution,” Tarhule said.
Tarhule added the university has not lost sight of how important staff are to the university.
“Ideally, we would like our staff to be the best compensated, the best paid, the happiest group. The question has never been about importance. The question is always between, given what we would like to do and the reality of the university's finances, what can we do? I think that's where the main challenge lies,” said Tarhule.
Changing culture?
Leadership churn was raised as an issue during public comment at Friday's trustees meeting.
“When I arrived here nine years ago, this was an exceedingly well-run institution. It was obvious everywhere. But those leaders have been almost completely replaced in the past couple of years, mostly with external hires,” said Tim Trombley, associate professor in the College of Business.
All six of ISU's longstanding colleges have changed deans in the past four years, Trombley said, most recently in his college. (The new College of Engineering is still on its first dean.)
Trombley was one of several faculty and students who spoke Friday. He said there is a "culture of fear and retaliation at this university," and that he felt ISU's shared governance model for policymaking had become used as a tool for retaliation.
“These documents were created to record longstanding best practices of good governance, but today they are instead treated like legal documents in which loopholes are to be found, and these loopholes are used to justify retaliation,” Trombley said.
Trombley told trustees that anger and disagreement are actually signs of faculty engagement.
"ISU doesn't have a problem with apathetic professors," Trombley said. "Many of our in-state competitors do. And I don't want to see us go down that path."
Enrollment and retention
Illinois State’s enrollment took a slight dip at the start of this school year. It was within range of what the university expected, but Tarhule said major declines could be coming as the number of graduates from Illinois high schools is expected to drop about 32% between now and 2040. About 19 of every 20 undergraduate students at ISU come from Illinois. These students make up a significant portion of university revenue.
“When you have that much drop in your pipeline, you can expect that it will ultimately, eventually, have an effect on your enrollment. So those are the things that we are watching very carefully,” said Tarhule.
One way the university aims to remedy that is by working to improve student retention.
“A lot of students are leaving for financial reasons, so we're trying to get a more granular analysis of the students that can be helped, who are in financially good standing, but whose financial gap is within a range that we think if we provided money, it will help them to stay here,” said Tarhule.
That means students missing just a few thousand dollars here or there in order to graduate might receive an olive branch to help them cross the finish line.
The university is also studying which courses consistently lead to more bad grades, failures and withdrawals.
“Not with a goal of dumbing it down and making sure everybody passes, but to make sure that if there are things we can do that will help the students pass the class while acquiring the same level of rigor and competence that we're doing all of those things,” said Tarhule.
Some students who already left are also being targeted for potential return. Tarhule said that approach is justified because the nation’s population of people who started college but did not attain a degree is about 43 million people — about twice that of the overall population of Americans who are in the traditional college age range of 17-25.
“The goal is: Are there people who we can entice to come back, who we can attract to come back? And complete their degrees, and therefore get some certification. That's the concept, and we are not the only ones looking at it,” said Tarhule.
ISU has brought back about 200 students already. It is easier said than done. That population includes people with jobs, finances and children to worry about. It requires reworking class structures to make them work for these potential students.
“You most likely have to teach them through online programs. You most likely have to do weekend or night classes that allow them to take these classes while still working, or you most likely have to provide the content in shorter chunks,” said Tarhule.
Return on investment
New federal guidelines that higher ed programs must churn out students earning more annually than someone who did not earn a degree could soon reshape thinking for universities. Programs at a specific college that fail to reach that expectation could see their students become ineligible for federal aid.
If a program fails to demonstrate high enough earnings in two out of three years, it would lose eligibility to participate in the federal Direct Loan program. After three consecutive years, eligibility for Title IV of the Higher Education Act [HEA] that includes Pell Grants would be terminated.
“It makes it increasingly challenging. It's basically reducing the opportunities for students to get federal financial aid,” said Tarhule.
Yet Tarhule said the goal of keeping students from borrowing too much money without then seeing return on investment is “commendable.”
“That's what the federal government is trying to do. We share that goal. Maybe not necessarily the exact mechanism for how to accomplish it, but that's what we want to do,” said Tarhule.
Tarhule said ISU would not want to take on students that leave worse off financially than if they had not come to school at all.
“First of all, it's not good for the reputation of the university, and second, those alums are not happy, and we want happier alums [who] can continue to elevate the reputation of the university,” said Tarhule.
By the end of fiscal year 2027, ISU anticipates results to come from Classification of Instructional Programs [CIP] data already submitted to the National Center for Education Statistics by the university. After the results come, Tarhule said, is when the university can identify areas that need additional work to remain in good standing under the rule.
