Restive university faculty members may — emphasize may — be in line for some good news.

It's far from a sure thing, given the questions surrounding the ongoing state budget negotiations in Springfield, but University of Illinois President Michael Hogan sounds optimistic about being able to provide pay raises for university employees.

It's been three years since UI employees got a general raise, and that's both emotionally and financially troublesome. But Hogan speculated in a wide-ranging interview last week that a raise of less than 4 percent is in the offing.

How much less than 4 percent — 1 percent or 3 percent — will be determined by Gov. Pat Quinn and members of the Illinois General Assembly.

Because of the state's acute budget problems, legislators are going through a torturous process trying to put together a budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1. Much remains to be determined between now and then, and that's why Hogan was not more specific.

But he has from the beginning of his tenure last summer spoken of the importance of granting salary increases to UI employees as well as avoiding furlough days. Given the UI's financial constraints, those are tough goals to achieve, and he's worked hard to get it done

One might not think so, given the recent public pounding members of the UI's faculty senate administered to the president. Hogan attended the meeting apparently, to his chagrin, to be the subject of a beat-down by angry members of the senate.

Frustration among the faculty is easy to understand, but it's hard to imagine the chorus of complaints aired by members of the faculty senate are reflective of the faculty as a whole.

Why would faculty members, as some senators suggested, feel they are being blamed for the UI's clouted admissions scandal of two years ago? Neither they nor Hogan, the president who came to campus after the scandal was over, had anything to do with it, and, frankly, no responsible party ever has suggested that they did.

Why would faculty, as some senators suggested, hold Hogan responsible for UI financial problems that stem from years of mismanagement of the state by the governor and members of the Legislature?

Hogan was hired to come in and address the mess, not the guy who created it. As of last week, the state still had not provided $312 million to the UI that the Legislature appropriated last year. That's a lot of money, and not receiving it yet has caused considerable consternation.

Naturally, coping with that kind of shortfall has forced Hogan to make the kinds of decisions that will always be unpopular in certain quarters. And as the man now in charge, he's a natural target of those with an ax to grind.

But the UI's financial woes, indeed the financial woes of the state of Illinois, are the product of years of systemic failure at the highest levels of government, exacerbated by a brutal economic recession. To think otherwise is to miss the point of what the state's current financial crisis is about.