If state can't meet its financial obligations, the University of Illinois will look to its students.

With the state's finances in dire shape and getting worse, University of Illinois officials face a limited number of choices in raising the revenue needed to keep the institution running.

So it's no surprise that one option under consideration is another in a long line of tuition increases.

Interim President Stanley Ikenberry said last week that an increase of at least 9 percent is likely, calling that figure a "best-case scenario."

"We may be looking at something worse," he warned.

Freshman in-state tuition for the 2009-10 school year ranged from $12,600 to nearly $17,000. Room and board, books and fees added another roughly $13,000 to the bill. It may still be considerably less than Harvard, but it's real money.

The UI Board of Trustees won't be taking up the tuition issue until summer, allowing some time for the state's financial picture to clear. But it's hard to imagine there will be any significant improvement in either the economy or the state's revenue picture that will make the trustees' decision any more palatable.

Even if state revenues would suddenly and dramatically increase, Illinois is so deeply in debt that it's hard to imagine the UI or any other state institutions would markedly benefit.

So it's likely tuition hikes or nothing if the UI is to make up for the shortfalls in promised state appropriations from the Illinois General Assembly, and the increases won't just be limited to the UI. All the state universities are in the same dangerously leaking boat.

Here again is the result of financial irresponsibility, the fallout from the profligate spending over the past eight years by the governor in partnership with state legislators.

When times were good earlier this decade, and they're weren't all that good, Illinois government spent on old programs and created new ones. When times were bad, they continued to do the same thing. Former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, of course, was in a class by himself when it came to destructive spending decisions. But our legislators happily joined in the spending orgy, even when there was no money and fiscal managers warned that they were courting disaster.

This sickening refusal to set and stick by priorities, to resist the urge to spend money the state didn't have, to tighten the reins on spending when the country went into recession in the summer of 2008, is now being felt across Illinois.

Ordinary citizens will be taking a big hit as the state's financial woes spread. Remember, the state's failure to deliver promised appropriations is not the result of an unwillingness to pay, it reflects an inability to pay. The state spent all it had and a lot more. Now it has commitments – old bills, current appropriations, pension payments, etc. – and it's basically broke.

An individual in that situation could file for bankruptcy, but the state will simply limp along as best it can.

There was no escape from the fallout of this recession, but the suffering need not have been so severe if the governor and legislators had acted in a common-sense manner. The concept of not spending more than you have, after all, is not complicated.

A government that tries to be all things to all people will, in the end, short-change everyone.