DeKalb Times

A Northern Illinois University (NIU) pensioner stands to earn an estimated lifetime payout of just under $1.85 million, according to the Illinois Policy Institute.

Ted Dabrowski, the institute's vice president of policy, and policy analyst John Klingner used the retiree to illustrate how high pensions costs, coupled with rising administrative salaries, force schools to increase tuition and fees at alarming rates. 

A lack of state funding is not the problem, they contend.

Former Northern Illinois University President John Peters | http://www.niu.edu/president/about/past-presidents.shtml

Million-dollar lifetime payout estimates are now not uncommon in the State University Retirement System, and combined with the high number of administrative employees and high salaries, universities are stuck in a cycle of raising tuition costs and pricing out prospective students, the writers argue.

In 2011, Illinois’s ratio of administrators to students at public universities hit 1 to 45. In fiscal year 2014, the school paid former President John Peters nearly $390,000. Three years later, in 2016, the school’s average tuition and fees hit $14,318, representing a 98 percent increase over the course of 10 years.

“The higher-education crisis has not resulted from Illinois’ budget gridlock,” Dabrowski and Klingner wrote in the report. “Rather, skyrocketing pensions, bloated administrative costs and soaring tuition and fees for students have caused it. These are all self-inflicted wounds.”