It’s a shame Illinois places such a low priority on education. The state education budget will be cut to ribbons, while legislators get a raise and the governor gets a 60 percent pay hike.

Unlike a salary increase, an education benefits more than just one person or family. Society in general benefits because an educated population produces a higher standard of living for all its citizens.

But Illinois taxpayers wrote to their legislators and told them they didn’t want to pay higher taxes. Some of those taxpayers will receive tuition bills from NIU that could be as much as $160 more per semester starting in January, 1988.

People who wanted the tax increase proposal to fail are kidding themselves if they think they’ll save money. They won’t pay more in state taxes. But they will pay higher municipal and property taxes because roads don’t build themselves and no one asks seven-year-olds to pay for public education.

In fact, by the time all the various taxes are increased at the local level, it won’t be a surprise if the total increase is higher than it would have been if the governor’s proposal had been passed by the legislature.

Naturally, no one thought about any of this when they wrote letters and made phone calls to their representatives. It’s presumed that college students all have a lot of money or they wouldn’t be in college. Recall U.S. Secretary of Education William Bennett’s accusations about stereos, spring break trips and Corvettes.

Despite the stereotype, many students work hard to pay for school in addition to the time they spend in class and studying. Fifth-year seniors are becoming more the rule than the exception at NIU, partly because students take lighter class loads to have time to work more.

Those who manage to get the money will pay more for college because there’s no other choice. But many students won’t be able to afford the tuition increase and will give up completing their college educations.

While $160 might not sound like much to most people, for college students that’s a month and a half of groceries, a winter’s heat bill or two months’ rent—if the student has a lot of roommates, and most at NIU do.

The people of Illinois have sent a message to all students: “We want quality education and will complain if we don’t get it, but we don’t want to pay for it—you pay for it.”