Illinois @ MindSay

CHICAGO — Gov. Patrick J. Quinn of Illinois appointed a panel on Wednesday to investigate accusations that the University of Illinois admitted hundreds of applicants based largely on their political connections.

Mr. Quinn said the Admissions Review Commission would look into 800 applicants who, as first reported by The Chicago Tribune, won spots at the university’s Urbana-Champaign campus after intervention from state lawmakers and university trustees. The Tribune said these students, whose names appeared on an internal list, were admitted even though some did not meet the university’s admission standards.

“We want to make sure that the taxpayers, parents and students of Illinois know there is no kind of special process where individuals who have less qualifications are admitted because of their political influence or clout,” Mr. Quinn, a Democrat, said. The University of Illinois, which has three campuses, is considered the state’s most prestigious public university.

The commission, which is to complete its work in 60 days, will be led by Abner Mikva, a retired federal judge and former state legislator and congressman, who had been a professor at the University of Chicago Law School. Mr. Mikva said the panel should not be as concerned about meting out punishment as with ensuring that any patronage influence in the university’s admission practices would not be tolerated.

Dupage County, Illinois, is about to embark on a $300 million odyssey into the land of proton cancer therapy. Two multi-gantry centers are slated to be built about 7 miles apart at ~ $150mil  each.

 

As explained in earlier entries in this blog, Northern Illinois has no shortage of photon (x-ray) treatment facilities. Many of these are equipped with the latest computer based dosiometry protocols. For the vast majority of cancer patients, no empiric evidence suggests that protons are superior to photons. But protons cost about 10 times more.

 

Health care costs are threatening to bring down the US economy. This insane overbuilding represents yet another failure of common sense.

As had been widely speculated, the Northern Illinois proton therapy program has stalled due to lack of funding. With credit markets seized up and another similar facility under construction with private funding a scant seven miles away, the $160 million in bonds needed by NIU cannot be had. The State of Illinois' enitre medical facility planning and funding apparatus is also in huge disarray thanks to Gov. Blago's well known foibles. Some recent participants in this process are already in jail and others are likely to follow.

 

I beleive that the proton stampede is at least premature since it is exhorbitantly costly and given the lack of clinical trial data to support its touted superiority for common malignancies. Now the arms race is on. With small single gantry proton facilities about to come on line, competeing health care systems will be forced to acquire units to maintain parity.

 

The NIU facility is likely dead. NIU's permit required that treatments begin within two years of its approval. One of those years has already passed. The competing unit may well be up and running before NIU can even start real construction. State and Federal funds are the only real hope for NIU now and I doubt a redundant proton facility will be a high priorty.

 

Of course, pork barrel spending has always been hard to forecast.

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Chicago and Illinois get high marks for the number of students completing college degree programs and the percentage of residents with degrees, but earns failing grades for the spiraling cost of higher education according to a new report by the National Center of Higher Education.

Chicago and Illinois colleges, like colleges across the nation, flunk when it comes to affordability, according to the report. Poor and working-class families must devote 37 percent of their income, even after aid, to pay for costs at two-year colleges, according to the report. For every dollar in Pell Grant aid to students, the state spends 82 cents - down from 89 cents in 1993, despite significant tuition increases.