“For yet another year, Illinois legislators allocated $500,000 to a college that no longer exists,” reports The College Fix. “Though Lincoln College closed in spring 2022, the state budget continues to set aside money for it, which critics suggest shows the rushed nature of the process….The college closed down in May 2022, blaming COVID-19 lockdowns and a cyberattack.”
The college may no longer exist, but its website does. A statement on the Lincoln College website says:
The institution experienced record-breaking student enrollment in Fall 2019, with residence halls at maximum capacity. Unfortunately, the coronavirus pandemic dramatically impacted recruitment and fundraising efforts, sporting events, and all campus life activities. The economic burdens initiated by the pandemic required large investments in technology and campus safety measures, as well as a significant drop in enrollment with students choosing to postpone college or take a leave of absence, which impacted the institution’s financial position.
Furthermore, Lincoln College was a victim of a cyberattack in December 2021 that thwarted admissions activities and hindered access to all institutional data, creating an unclear picture of Fall 2022 enrollment projections. All systems required for recruitment, retention, and fundraising efforts were inoperable.
Illinois is also funding a city-owned grocery store in a town with a falling population, even though city-owned grocery stores tend to provide bad food and lose money. Shoppers are “frustrated” by the rancid smell, expired food, and empty shelves at a taxpayer-funded grocery store in Kansas City. An ABC TV station reports:
Customers at the Sun Fresh grocery store near 31st Street and Prospect Avenue say they’re facing increasingly empty shelves, with little food left to buy and an odor that greets them at the door.
“Now they have nothing! There is nothing,” said shopper Michaelle Randolph. “I walked in and I’m like, ‘OK, where is all the food?’…“The milk, I am scared to buy some,” she said. “Even the dates, they may have a few days over. I don’t want to buy that.”
Shelves that once held fresh produce, dairy, meat and frozen food are now mostly bare.
[Shopper Jon] Murphy also described a rancid smell at the store’s entrance.
“It’s a rancid odor. I think something is dead or something’s gone bad,” he said.
Illinois spends more on dismally-bad colleges than on apprenticeships and workforce training. Over the years, it has spent billions of dollars on awful schools that graduate few of their students, like Chicago State University, which had an 11% graduation rate in 2016. As one education expert noted, “Our colleges and universities are full to the brim with students who do not really belong there, who are unprepared for college and uninterested in breaking a mental sweat.”
