I wouldn't say Chicago State is considered an unofficial HBCU. It certainly doesn't have that status in any legal statute I'm aware of and that is the grounds for which legal action could be taken to protect it's funding and status as a university if it actually were.

Thus, they would have a much more uphill climb in trying to stay open as compared to some schools in the SWAC and MEAC. I consider it an unofficial HBCU but that opinion as well as some other like minded opinions in the shadows has little real world value, where legal statute and historical definition play a much bigger role.

http://hbcuconnect.com/colleges/17/chica...university

It seems like they are being treated like a HBCU.

(12-15-2016 06:25 AM)_C2_ Wrote:  I wouldn't say Chicago State is considered an unofficial HBCU. It certainly doesn't have that status in any legal statute I'm aware of and that is the grounds for which legal action could be taken to protect it's funding and status as a university if it actually were.

It wasn't founded as an HBCU, it doesn't have the legal status of one. But it's a majority-black school anyway, and it has the political protection of (a good chunk of) Chicago's black politicians.

Quote:Thus, they would have a much more uphill climb in trying to stay open as compared to some schools in the SWAC and MEAC. I consider it an unofficial HBCU but that opinion as well as some other like minded opinions in the shadows has little real world value, where legal statute and historical definition play a much bigger role.

Closing the school would mean a political fight. "Team Black Chicago" in the Illinois state legislature/Cook County/Chicago city government would fight fairly hard, and I don't know that anyone is going to be motivated to work harder than them. Nobody's going to go back to their voters and beat their chest and claim credit for closing a college.

(12-15-2016 08:04 AM)DavidSt Wrote:  http://hbcuconnect.com/colleges/17/chica...university

It seems like they are being treated like a HBCU.

That adds credibility to the claim but it'd still be tougher than the southern majority black schools.

I know the role it plays on the SS of Chicago and it's political backers but if it doesn't perform or attract new students, even bigger, it'll be on the chopping block.

(12-14-2016 07:49 PM)LatahCounty Wrote:  I'll swap presidents with them. Chicago St. clearly needs Chuck Staben to shut this thing down in a hurry.

Well played.

Either that or Ray Watts. I'll bet UAB's fanbase would send him to CSU without asking for anything in return.

(12-15-2016 01:16 AM)DavidSt Wrote:  

(12-14-2016 09:30 PM)Love and Honor Wrote:  Like I said in an earlier Chicago State thread, they either need to merge with Northeastern Illinois or preferably hang it up altogether. I'm sure they serve a portion of the Chicagoland area that wouldn't receive post-secondary education otherwise, but that doesn't justify the massive institutional failure all around.

One thing. There will be push back on this since Chicago State is considered an unofficial HBCU which there have been pushed back in several states on merging HBCUs into other schools that would eliminate the HBCUs.

I'm a big supporter of keeping some HBCU's open, but CSU is a harder case to make.

There are virtually no students going there anymore.

My guess is that the state has decided to go on the 10 year plan to shut it down. Let the school run itself off the rails and when programs get below 10 students, cancel the department. Then when the school doesn't reallly offer much, then say to the 200 full time students and 1000 part time students....we will pay your way to NE Ill if the school is shut down. Cheaper than paying for the school to operate in perpetuity.

Sure, the administrators will throw a fit, but I'm not sure there's going to be much of a hit. Because there will be no students.

If they can't attract new students, they can't stay open. At best, they'll go the way of Morris Brown in Atlanta, which has fewer students than a high school in a small town.

There's just no good answer for Chicago State. It makes some intuitive sense to allow Chicago State students to transfer to Northeastern Illinois University when looking at the situation in a vacuum, but the practical issue is that NEIU is on the complete other side of the city (which is a huge deal when you're dealing with an at-risk low-income student population that has limited transportation options). This would be like having people transfer from a school based in Fort Worth to a school based in Dallas... and none of those students have cars to be able to actually attend that school in Dallas in practicality. It's sort of like offering a transfer option that we realistically know that virtually everyone is going to end up turning down. UIC is closer geographically, but its academic standards are WAY WAY WAY higher than what you see at CSU. There's no way that UIC would offer admission to CSU students, and even if they did, you're basically guaranteeing that those students will drown academically while racking up even more debt.

By the same token, though, I don't think it's even a 10-year timeframe for a shutdown of the school if it already only has 85 freshman this year. It's going to die a lot more quickly than that. It's unfortunately a vicious circle since the idiotic Illinois budget impasses have effectively eliminated funding for schools like Chicago State, which then dissuades potential new students from attending CSU, which then means that CSU has even less tuition income and exacerbates the funding crisis.

(12-15-2016 03:18 AM)_C2_ Wrote:  

(12-14-2016 08:11 PM)chargeradio Wrote:  

(12-14-2016 06:56 PM)Cyniclone Wrote:  I sort of see their logic. If they start a non-scholarship football team and find 100 kids willing to pay their way to go there, then that's a decent chunk of change for a school that might literally be running on change at this point.

It's a desperation heave and I don't think it'll work, but I think I see *why* they think it'll work.

Quite frankly, it should have been done a few years ago. At this point Division III is probably a better option.

I'm not sure where the proposed Olympic Stadium was going to be in Chicago, but having CSU (or UIC) as a tenant for it post-Olympics would have fixed a glaring deficiency in Chicago's bid. The stadium could have been downsized to 10,000 or so for football, and any spare parts (mainly seating and kitchen equipment) could have been recycled at other venues around the region.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk.

If anything, the Bears, White Sox or even a second NFL team would have moved in as opposed it going to a college. Or if it was close enough, Illinois-Chicago could have used it.

Much of the proposed Olympic Village and Stadium development was centered on the southern end of the South Loop and Bronzeville (just south of Soldier Field and McCormick Place). Within the context of the plan, it actually made sense (to the extent that spending on an Olympic boondoggle would ever make sense) since it's one of those areas where there was a large site available (the now-closed Michael Reese hospital) in a location where it would be reasonable to see how it would be an attractive place for "normal people" in the future (on the lakefront and connected to the South Loop and McCormick Place) and a public works project could push it from a fringe area to a place that would gentrify. (This is what London was able to do with its Olympic facilities and turned what they had considered to be a rough downtrodden area into one of the hottest real estate markets in the city.) Essentially, it was a location that was having slow development on its own, but it was very close to all of the assets that you could reasonably see spurring a lot more private development with the right push. (This is in contrast to other proposed sites deeper on the South Side that would have made nice urban revitalization headlines, but in practicality would have been terrible since they would have been islands that wouldn't spur additional private development.) In terms of colleges in the city, the biggest beneficiary of that site would have actually been the Illinois Institute of Technology (where their location that's probably perceived by the average college student as a negative, with its currently borderline sketchy neighborhood, would have turned into a more attractive neighborhood as an extension of the South Loop).

Regardless, the Chicago proposal was actually very good. I think most independent observers would have judged it to be the best overall proposal and financially viable (by Olympic boondoggle standards). Amazingly, our political culture of corruption was outdone by the even more blatant corruption of Brazil and the IOC. Frankly, we dodged a financial bullet when we were passed over as I can't even imagine how much even worse the budget issues would be if there were massive Olympic obligations on top of them.

(12-14-2016 04:36 PM)TodgeRodge Wrote:  this is what happens when you hire David State as your university president

I thought it was short for David (the) Saint

The 'H' in HBCU stands for "Historically". Meaning schools that were founded with the specific mission of serving African Americans.

Chicago State U is not a HBCU. Simple as that. It was founded as a Teacher's College for Cook County. Later on, it was taken over by the city and/or public school board (can't remember which), partly because so many of its students became teachers in the city's public schools.

As the South Side became overwhelmingly African American, so did the school's student body. Nowadays, the only schools with such level of African American dominated enrollment are HBCU's.

(12-15-2016 08:58 AM)johnbragg Wrote:  Closing the school would mean a political fight. "Team Black Chicago" in the Illinois state legislature/Cook County/Chicago city government would fight fairly hard, and I don't know that anyone is going to be motivated to work harder than them. Nobody's going to go back to their voters and beat their chest and claim credit for closing a college.

I don't doubt that for a second. Anyone fighting to close CSU would probably be labeled as "try to take away opportunities for African Americans from South Side to make a better life for themselves and their families", or something like that.

(12-15-2016 12:05 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  There's just no good answer for Chicago State. It makes some intuitive sense to allow Chicago State students to transfer to Northeastern Illinois University when looking at the situation in a vacuum, but the practical issue is that NEIU is on the complete other side of the city

What about:

1) turn CSU into a two year college. We still need trained technicians and skilled labor. And it's easier to get someone to graduate in two years than four.

If that's still a non-starter with the South Side political bloc, then,

2) CSU becomes NEIU - South Side Branch Campus.


Perhaps it's hard to see how 2 would change anything. All I can say to that is: the only way you have a chance at change is if you actually change something. So why not give it a shot?

Why not merge Chicago St into Northeastern Illinois and disband the sports programs? Both schools serve a similar function and the same clientele , albeit in different neighborhoods.

That's been floated many times. The consensus answer is that they're on different sides of the city and CSU's student body is non-traditional and, very bluntly, generally really poor. So poor, in fact, that they can't afford to go to that side of the city regularly.

But again, as I said, why not just rebrand the campus as NEIU - South Side Campus??

Maybe that changes nothing, but you have to try something if politics dictates that you can't close the campus and can't convert it into a two year college.

(12-15-2016 11:15 PM)MplsBison Wrote:  But again, as I said, why not just rebrand the campus as NEIU - South Side Campus??

Maybe that changes nothing, but you have to try something if politics dictates that you can't close the campus and can't convert it into a two year college.

Announce that every student at CSU gets a free scholarship to NE Ill, if the school is shut down. Cheaper than keeping the school open (and would go away once the current students graduate/drop out).

The students would demand the school be shut down. Turn CSU into a 2 year feeder school for NE Ill and UIC.

To be sure, the administration and faculty would raise a stink, but with the students clamoring for the school to be shut down, they'd be able to swing it....barely.

Oh, and another thing...wait for Rauner to be gone. No one on the South Side trusts him. So, it would be better if a Democrat did it. Far better.

Under other circumstances the idea is not bad and they literally could field a competitive team never leaving a 30-50 mile recruiting radius.

However, the current CSU is too far gone. This was a good proposal about 5 years ago.

And this, the Pioneer would not take them.

(12-16-2016 01:13 AM)Tom in Lazybrook Wrote:  

(12-15-2016 11:15 PM)MplsBison Wrote:  But again, as I said, why not just rebrand the campus as NEIU - South Side Campus??

Maybe that changes nothing, but you have to try something if politics dictates that you can't close the campus and can't convert it into a two year college.

Announce that every student at CSU gets a free scholarship to NE Ill, if the school is shut down. Cheaper than keeping the school open (and would go away once the current students graduate/drop out).

The students would demand the school be shut down. Turn CSU into a 2 year feeder school for NE Ill and UIC.

I think the issue with this is that it overlaps the mission of the Chicago City Colleges (the city's community college system). Maybe the answer is to flip it around and have CSU concentrate on only taking upperclassmen that have earned their associate's degrees and want to move on to get their bachelor's and master's degrees.

Quote:Oh, and another thing...wait for Rauner to be gone. No one on the South Side trusts him. So, it would be better if a Democrat did it. Far better.

This is true. Perception is reality. Heck, you can even say that many of them won't trust Rahm Emmanuel (who is a Democrat that is as close to Obama as anyone). There's simply a serious perception that everything being done is hurting the South Side in favor of the rest of the city.

(12-14-2016 06:09 PM)NoDak Wrote:  

(12-14-2016 05:35 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  Is there anyone attending Chicago St that isn't a varsity athlete? 100 freshmen!? My tiny D3 school brought in classes of 400 or more and the place felt extremely tiny. This school needs to close plain and simple--or at least discontinue athletics and refocus their efforts to attract non-traditional students to their commuter campus.

It's less than 100 freshman, but can't remember the number. No student will enroll there now without getting paid to do it as it might not be there in the future.

Chicago St is just looking for handouts from the state and a football team is one way they can get students to enroll. How Illinois puts up with the waste there is another question, but Jesse Jackson and his cohorts have a lot of power. Maybe they cannot use the $600 k that went to their fired President to fund the football team.

"But to make matters worse, only 86 people registered for the school’s fall freshman class. That includes part-timers."

http://chicago.suntimes.com/politics/mit...p-its-act/

(12-16-2016 11:21 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  Maybe the answer is to flip it around and have CSU concentrate on only taking upperclassmen that have earned their associate's degrees and want to move on to get their bachelor's and master's degrees.

If freshman won't enroll at CSU, I don't see why people with the drive to earn a 2-year degree with the intention of obtaining a 4-year degree would want to enroll at CSU.

Maybe if you rebrand it as NEIU-South Side ....

(12-16-2016 11:21 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  This is true. Perception is reality. Heck, you can even say that many of them won't trust Rahm Emmanuel (who is a Democrat that is as close to Obama as anyone). There's simply a serious perception that everything being done is hurting the South Side in favor of the rest of the city.

Purely curious: has there ever been any thought into drawing a line in the sand, say around the U of Chicago, and just lopping the everything down from that right off? Call it the City of South Chicago??

(12-16-2016 02:38 PM)MplsBison Wrote:  Purely curious: has there ever been any thought into drawing a line in the sand, say around the U of Chicago, and just lopping the everything down from that right off? Call it the City of South Chicago??

Can it be a red line?