Your editorial, “Chicago State is Falling Apart,” should be rewritten as “Illinois Politics Meets Adam Smith.”
A university system is no different than a business enterprise.
When a business gets too bloated due to salaries or an unneeded or inefficient physical plant or bloated benefits and tries to overcome these inefficiencies by taking on debt or by raising prices beyond what the market will support, it loses customers (students).
It may be time to visit the story of why IU students have been paying elevated tuition increases over the past twenty years in order to pay for a bloated retirement plan that was implemented in the 1950s.
The University nor the state of Indiana would make up for the pension deficit so the University has been making up the short fall through above average tuition increases.
How do the students handle the increases? By taking on student debt. The invisible hand at work.
Gregory Gwin
