The new president of the University of Illinois has three immediate priorities:

– Guide the UI through its budgetary crisis.

– Save the "dilapidated" hospital in Chicago.

– Restructure the university to make it more efficient in harder times.

And Michael Hogan told The News-Gazette editorial board he saw the UI not as a system, but as "one university."

"I didn't come here to run a system," he said.

He said he came to run an institution of excellence, noting the UI is in the top three in the Big Ten, a coalition he praised as the finest public universities in the nation.

Besides removing redundancies, which he said he had no interest in continuing, a "one university" system has a clarity of purpose.

Hogan said chancellors will report to the president, and only the president will report to the UI Board of Trustees.

He said it was possible that administration at the chancellor level will be reduced or combined, praising interim Chancellor Robert Easter's work as both chancellor and provost.

Hogan said the Urbana chancellor search is a few months off, possibly as late as January. The Springfield chancellor search has already begun.

He also said outgoing interim President Stanley Ikenberry will serve as his senior adviser on restructuring, and the changes should be expected "quickly" based on the Administrative Review and Restructuring work group report. The team suggested there could be as much as $60 million in savings in the next three years.

Ikenberry said last week that 14 vice chancellor positions could be reduced to 12 or even 10.

One thing Hogan hopes not to do, he said repeatedly, is impose furloughs, as the Urbana campus did this year, and his old university, Connecticut, has done in the past.

Hogan said zero percent increases, if necessary, make better budgetary constraints than unpaid days off.

He said he doesn't know why furloughs are so demoralizing to workers, but he is sure they are, saying that furloughed medical workers in Connecticut "went bananas" when they were imposed.

He did not make an iron-bound pledge, but said he would use furlough days only as a last resort, noting that the money saved, some $17 million, paled next to the $279 million currently owed to the UI by the state.

Vice President Walter Knorr said the UI has received about $54 million from the state in the last week, but there were no certainties about whether that would continue.

The president, in his first day in office, stressed the positive, saying he hoped private foundations could help the UI as state support continues to decrease, particularly in the area of scholarships.

He said he was committed to a "Jeffersonian ideal" that includes not only excellence but also diversity.

He said he will work hard to help the faculty, and especially to maintain its standards by retaining its best members, who often bring dollars and future scholars to the UI, he noted.

That task is not as imposing as it may seem, he said, because the UI is not alone in having budget troubles, and many highly regarded institutions are having hiring and salary freezes.

On his own $620,000 salary, he said at a morning press conference that he was not defensive about it.

He noted that the figure is similar to what he earned at Connecticut, and in the mid-range for competing universities.

He promised to bring money into the university, noting that he'll spend roughly a third of his time on fundraising and alumni relations.

Hogan said the trustees can reconsider his compensation if he doesn't get results.

Ask in a year, "What have I done to earn that salary?" Hogan told reporters.

He said he has weathered three or four financial crises in his academic career and is convinced he can help the UI there.

He explained that he has the expertise to perform his second-highest priority, of redirecting priorities at the Chicago medical campus, because he did exactly that in Connecticut, where he said the hospital was run as if it were not part of "one university."

Hogan said he had the patience to strive, considering that he failed four times in reconfiguring Connecticut's hospital before his fifth, successful effort.

Hogan said he wanted to bring a "humanistic" and open effort to restore the "social compact" wherein the citizenry support higher education. He said the humanities and some social sciences are core to a university's mission, and noted that they still bring in money through tuition in core courses.

"I want to be very open and transparent and visible," Hogan said.

He said freedom of speech for liberals and conservatives alike was an important role for universities.

Hogan said he considered Category I, the admissions scandal of last summer, "a settled matter," and added that it entered into his decision to take the job "less than you would think."