RENT SEEKERS GOTTA SEEK RENTS.

Sometimes, it is good to be pensioned off and out of the fray.  "Faculty members are concerned about the future of four-year institutions in Illinois, including a state bill that would create bachelor degree programs at community colleges, sociology professor Símon Weffer said at Wednesday’s Faculty Senate meeting."

We used to have something resembling a division of effort in the state's colleges and universities, with the research flagship in Urbana, a few converted teachers' colleges with a smattering of graduate and professional degree programs, and each county had a two-year college doing baccalaureate prep as well as technical and vocational certificates, and continuing education.

Now, it's looking more like a free-for-all.  "Weffer said he’s concerned with the general underselling of the importance of four-year institutions in the fabric of our society as a state."  It might have come to this when the four-year institutions decided that paying obeisance to the diversity weenies was more important than having standards.

Or, perhaps, it's about clinging to those few privileges that faculty at four-year state-located universities still have.

“We’re worried that with this document, people will skip the narrative and go straight to the metrics and not see anything that really measures the impact of higher education on the greater society, and when I mean higher education, I mean everything research, artistry teaching, civic engagement and on,” Weffer said.

Weffer also addressed Senate Bill 1832, a bill that would allow community colleges to create bachelor’s degree programs for early childhood education. The bill has gained support from Illinois lawmakers and would address high turnover and low wages in the early education workforce and low enrollment at community colleges across the state, according to an April 7 Chalkbeat Chicago.

“The problem is that if we allow community colleges to start granting a B.A. in any way, shape, or form, it’s only a matter of time that they might say ‘this is only early childhood education,” Weffer said. “We know that one of the things that happens is that these programs tend to be extended.”

I'm not sure how additional credentials address what looks more like the usual labor market response to low pay and crappy working conditions in early childhood education, which has long attracted idealistic young people, particularly young women, but has long been less than truthful about the pay and working conditions.

Whether generating additional capacity in a part of the higher education sector that probably already has excess capacity is another matter.  On the other hand, there's a longer view one might take: were there people in the University of Illinois system raising similar objections when those normal schools started behaving more like universities?  Back then, though, there might have been rising populations.