While Gov. James Thompson and the members of the Illinois legislature sit back biding their time until the right moment comes along to support public education institutions in the I-88 research and development corridor, private institutions in Illinois are quickly moving ahead in leaps and bounds.

The Illinois Institute of Technology has announced plans to build a muliti-million dollar “high-tech” campus in the heart of the high-tech corridor. A campus which DuPage County officials say will fill a county need for an educational facility emphasizing engineering and scientific disciplines.

This is no new idea. In fact, an educational needs assessment study requested by the Illinois Board of Higher Education in 1987 found the area was in need of technical and advanced graduate courses. This study then prompted an IBHE fiscal 1989 budget recommending the state appropriate $3 million to create a multi-university graduate research center, but this received no support.

And most recently Jack Knuepfer, the DuPage County Board chairman, again has been pressing the state legislature to provide funding for a multi-university campus. The proposal is to be considered again by the legislature at the November veto session. Unfortunately, the proposal will more than likely go by the wayside just as NIU’s funding requests to build an anchor facility for the high-tech corridor with the acquisition of the Wurlitzer property did.

In contrast to the unanswered pleas from public institutions such as NIU for funding, IIT’s $4 million, 19-acre site was a donation from the Dan and Ada Rice Foundation.

For now, the best NIU can do to compete is to maintain its master’s of Business Administration programs in Lisle and Schaumburg and other off-campus programs and to hope for a chance from the state to establish a permanent base on the high-tech corridor.

If action is not taken, the state’s public universities soon will be left behind waiting for the construction dust to settle, only to find they have been forced by lack of funding to pass up their chance at a piece of the action.