Are Illinois public colleges trying to educate citizens?
SINCE 1921, Illinois law has required Illinois public colleges and universities to instruct all students in the principles of representative government. Since 1953, each student has been required to pass an examination on that subject in order to graduate. This requirement is commonly called the “Constitution exam” or the “Senate Bill 195” requirement. Enforcement of this law, however, is lax and many students receive degrees from Illinois universities with no instruction in the system of democratic government. State universities which ignore the law completely (except for teacher certification) are the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and at Chicago Circle, and Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. Other state universities evade the law’s requirement by accepting as sufficient the fact that a student successfully completed the requirement in high school. Western Illinois is apparently the only four-year institution which does that. However, since 1972 the Illinois Comm
