The Illinois Joint University Advisory Committee is voicing its concern that the three Illinois universities are competing with their governing board, the Board of Regents, for program improvement expansion (PIE) dollars.

NIU, Illinois State University at Normal, Sangamon State University at Springfield and the Regents each submit annual requests for grants from the PIE fund for new projects, improvements and expansions.

However, before the requests are submitted to the Illinois Board of Higher Education they are studied and prioritized by the Regents.

Paul Borg, JUAC president and ISU music professor, said the Regents’ system PIE requests are then combined with requests from all other state institutions. He said the IBHE then approves the requests according to priority and how much money is available each year.

Borg said JUAC’s concern is that the Regents might be prioritizing its PIE requests above the requests from the three universities. “And when you’re dealing with such a small amount of money that has to be spread around so many different ways, every little bit is important,” he said.

Judy Bischoff, NIU executive secretary to the University Council and a JUAC member, said “The PIE money is scarce as it is.” She said JUAC is concerned that the universities are being denied requests because of competition from the Regents’ requests.

Borg said the Illinois Legislature appoints a certain amount of money to the PIE fund each year, but the amount for fiscal year 1989 has not yet been disclosed.

Bischoff said one solution for the competition concern is to appoint one JUAC member to each of the Regents’ standing committees. She said the committee membership would allow JUAC to be at the “ground level” of all Regents’ proposals and to give university-level input.

Bischoff said the JUAC membership would allow university faculty and staff to work directly with the Regents, which would help universities’ communications with the Regents.

Borg said that he did not know whether the proposed JUAC committee members would be voting members. “But I don’t know if that even matters,” he said.

JUAC plans to propose the committee membership to Regents Chairman Carol Burns at the Jan. 25-26 Regents meeting at SSU, Borg said.

Burns said Wednesday that she was not aware of any of JUAC’s concerns and that she was not aware of the planned proposal.

She said she did not see much of a problem with the JUAC committee membership because JUAC members already attend committee meetings.