The five hearings throughout Illinois to evaluate the effectiveness and garnish support or criticism for the state’s higher education governing boards has concluded.

However, it is not the time for those truly concerned about education to be optimistic.

The action, under the guise of Senate Resolution 460, was intended to have the Commission on Intergovernmental Cooperation study the effectiveness of the boards, and then make their appropriate recommendations.

Recommendations that have been generally expounded upon by political candidates, usually in the vague sense of improving Illinois’s higher education system, have fallen by the wayside after the victory speech.

Recommendations that have fallen upon the unconvinced ears of students and professors, because they know it is mostly rhetoric, and upon the ears of the unknowing taxpayer, who might not fully understand the connection between public education and tax dollars.

It is, or should be, common knowledge that the overdue reform will not arrive because legislators do not have the time to meet with everyone if the system was revamped. This fact clearly was evident in NIU’s attempt at a separate governing board.

There has not been any noticable action, let alone improvement, so why should we get excited?