Gov. Jim Edgar’s Task Force on Higher Education is expected to submit a report by the end of this month which will recommend the elimination of the Board of Regents and the Board of Governers.

The impending report likely will recommend replacing the Regents and the Governers with individual boards at each university.

The task force is co-chaired by Lt. Gov. Bob Kustra and Illinois Board of Higher Education Chairman Arthur Quern. Kustra’s chief of staff, Jim Bray, said the new system would be simpler and would be easier for students and taxpayers to know whom to hold accountable for actions taken in higher education.

Under the present system, NIU, Illinois State University and Sangamon State University are governed by the Regents. The Governors oversee five schools, and the University of Illinois and Southern Illinois UNiversity campuses each have their own boards.

The governing boards are coordinated by the IBHE.

Bray said the Regents and the Governors are “two bureaucracies which are easily dismantled and removed.”

Regents Chancellor Roderick Groves said he did not think the recommendations would improve the governance system.

“I don’t see how creating eight new boards would be more efficient or how it would lessen the bureaucracy,” Groves said.

Bray said the bureaucracy would be streamlined because the individual boards would be smaller than the present boards and the university presidents and their staffs could handle many of the individual boards’ responsibilities.

Groves said if implemented, the new-system could expand the authority of the IBHE. “My understanding of the individual boards is that they would be low cost, low profile, unpowerful boards.

“Kustra has said if the Regents and Board of Governors are eliminated that a power vacuum would occur and the IBHE would logically fill that vacuum,” Groves said.

Bray refused to comment on what kind of powers the individual boards would have because the task force still is discussing the issue.

Groves said he is disappointed that the task force has not sought the input of the universities. “No one has asked them what they think is really best for higher education.”

He said the task force, which submitted its first report last June, was supposed to have three public hearings on the subject of governance. “They submitted that report and then disappeared off the face of the earth until last week.”

Bray said university input was sought and there was a public hearing before the June report. However, he said there were never supposed to be three public hearings since then.