When the going gets tough, the tough normally get going. Except in the case of the Illinois Board of Higher Education.

One year before new academic standards for state university admission set by the IBHE were slated to have gone into effect, the IBHE has begun to make plans to back down on its own proposal. This raises the question of whether the board is indeed acting in the best interest of the state’s universities and students.

In 1985 after nationwide cries were heard demanding improvements in the quality of American education, the IBHE declared it would do its part to help. The board consequently ruled that by 1990 the 10 state universities would require all their applicants to have taken several specific high school courses. Their list included four years of English, three years each of social studies, math and science and two years of a foreign language, art or music.

Such requirements are not too much to ask for, and should be the basis for any high school student’s education. But now the IBHE wants to have its four-year-old proposal either completely dropped or made only advisory in its power.

Illinois needs these higher standards for education put into effect now, before the predicaments of state schools get any worse. Schools already are plagued with trying to make up for the educational deficiencies students currently are allowed to slip into. High school students are trying to learn what they should have in grade school, and college students what they should have in high school.

It’s time for the IBHE to lay down the law and give high school students a signal that they must make a conscious effort to learn in order to move up to a state college.