Youre also in a very affluent North Shore / Northwest suburb area, Zinhead. It’s easy for well to do kids to be uninterested in Illinois directionals when money is no object. For students in more mixed-middle-to-upper-middle, I’m willing to bet the directionals are stronger. As is the comm-college-transfer-to-UIUC option.
^I think this is very true. Children of wealthy parents want to go “away” for college, ideally to a college located in a “hot” destination town. The thought of staying in the state to go to school 2 hours south probably doesn’t sound very exciting.
However, spending 60K a year on a undergraduate degree when one has a great in state option like UIUC might not always be the fisically smart choice.
I’m also from the western (Chicago) suburbs. I have 2 children attending UIUC.
I’ll just make a few comments in response to some of the previous posts.
First, personally, I like the drive to UIUC. Madsion may be approx. the same travel time but I prefer the low stress/less congestion drive. Thank goodness for Interstate 355. And rienrah made me laugh…yes, you can easily drive a half hr and still be in Naperville.
Second, I disagree that the campus is “not very attractive”. For those who haven’t been on campus check out the link and decide for yourself. http://www.onlyinyourstate.com/illinois/drone-footage-il/
Lastly, since this is a thread about migration of college students, I will add my observation about the situation in Illinois. There are a lot of academically strong students, but as it has already been pointed out, there is a lack of affordable, quality 2nd tier schools. I have seen the disappointment and frustration from these parents firsthand. I empathize.
To me there seems to be two camps where the anger emanates…those who didn’t get into their desired major and those who do get in with their desired major, but find it unaffordable or less attractive from a cost standpoint.
So while I understand why these people vent, it doesn’t take away from the opportunities and the quality of the experience for those who are fortunate enough to attend UIUC.
My brother, an engineer, lived in Illinois for many years. He has three sons, all engineers. The middle son applied but wasn’t admitted to UIUC engineering as a freshman, so he enrolled in an Illinois directional, did well in his first 2 years and transferred to UIUC engineering to finish his engineering degree. The oldest and youngest sons opted to attend their parents’ alma mater, an OOS public university with a strong engineering school that gives automatic scholarships to OOS legacies, allowing them to attend at the in-state rate which was at the time, and still is, lower than in-state tuition at UIUC. All three were very happy with their college educations, and all three launched into successful professional careers.
I suspect there may be a fair bit of that. Chicago has long been a talent magnet for people from other parts of the Midwest, and many of those families maintain tribal loyalties to other places and sometimes to other schools. So for a fair number of the Illinois diaspora going off to college in surrounding states, it’s partly about “going home” to the ancestral homeland where they may maintain some ongoing family ties, sentimental ties based on happy memories of childhood visits, parental encouragement and approval, etc.
Yep. UIUC does have the problem that it’s dominated by a Big 3 metropolis, and none of the Big 3 (NYC, LA, and Chicago) are completely loyal to their state flagships. In part because they drew a lot of people from elsewhere, as @bclintonk mentioned.
But also because they have to compete with a bunch of local privates who are as good or better. That’s why comparing the amount of fervor Illinoisians have for UIUC with what the residents of MI and WI have for UMich or UW-Madison is quite unfair. In both MI and WI, the flagship is by far the best college in that state and no one else is close. That’s not true in IL but is a reality that UIUC has to deal with. Granted, in PA, PSU’s alums are devoted and many Pittsburghers are proud of Pitt. But both those schools are semi-privates now.
There’s something to what you say, @ PurpleTitan. I’d say the only privates in Illinois that can legitimately claim to be “as good or better” than UIUC are Chicago and Northwestern (except perhaps in some narrow programs), and neither of them enrolls huge numbers of Illinois students. But they probably draw a lot of hopeful Illinois applicants, including many who would regard attending UIUC as settling for second-best, and who, once they’re applying to U of C and NU,may also decide to apply to other elite privates on the same plane. Evidence indicates far more Illinois students apply to and attend elite privates than do residents of Michigan and Wisconsin, who are more likely to regard their in-state flagship as plenty good enough. The in-state presence of U of C and NU probably has something to do with that.
I’d imagine U of C and NU suck up a lot of the private philanthropy dollars, too.
But as a former resident of Chicago (for 10 years), I have to say that I always though UIUC was a peculiar non-presence in the Chicago area, It just didn’t have much of a public profile. U of C and NU and even UIC to some extent had various public intellectuals who weighed in on public issues, or who would be consulted as experts by the local news media. Prominent local figures had their surgeries done at the NU or U of C medical centers. NU and U of C were always announcing new initiatives or programs; scarcely a peep out of UIUC, or at any rate, it wasn’t reported. It was as if UIUC existed on another planet. Perhaps that partly just reflects the extreme insularity of the Chicago news media, but I also thought at the time it reflected a PR failure on the part of UIUC. The Universities of Michigan and Wisconsin are a much more visible presence in the public life of their respective states, including in the dominant media markets and population centers. Maybe again that’s partly lack of competition. But some of its may be lack of effort, or lack of skill.
As a 10 year resident of Chicago from a complete outsiders perspective (U of Wa grad with a now ex at NU for med school) I completely agree with @bclintonk, that was my very strong impression while living there.
"I’d imagine U of C and NU suck up a lot of the private philanthropy dollars, "
Yeah. You hear about big donors to either / both of those schools, such as the Pritzkers (their name is on NU’s law school and UC’s med school, so you’ve got to be pretty heavy hitter!). They’re probably the most prominent philanthropic family in this area (Hyatt Hotels family for those who aren’t familiar with them), and some members are quite active politically.
Interestingly I was on UC campus the other day and as an NU person it struck me how many of the same names were on buildings (Crown, Regenstein, Swift, Wieboldt …) - the old time philanthropic families.
In many cases, the OOS school is cheaper. At our high school, 1/3rd of the students have an ACT score of 30 or above. With a 30 or above, these kids are eligible for merit aid in the form of in-state tuition at Ohio State, Michigan State and Minnesota, and have a very strong chance of getting a minimum $5,000 merit award at Indiana, Purdue, Wisconsin or Iowa that would make these schools similar in price to UIUC.
A friend of ours who is an OSU alum was delighted when his daughter became a Buckeye and got an in-state scholarship with a tuition cost of $10,000. FWIW, at our school, more people applied to IU than UIUC in the hopes of getting merit aid.
If you are willing to expand your search to the South, Plains, and Western states, there are plenty of merit aid offers at flagship state universities. That is the reason we have more than 15 kids attend Missouri and more than 10 go to Alabama each year.
The NCES data:
Residence and migration of all first-time degree/certificate-seeking undergraduates in 4-year degree-granting postsecondary institutions who graduated from high school in the previous 12 months, by state or jurisdiction: Fall 2014
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d15/tables/dt15_309.30.asp
This data is easier to work with and includes public and private schools.
For example:
Total first-time enrollment in institutions located in Illinois: 48,510 (25% are OOS students)
Illinois residents enrolled in institutions In any state: 65,573
Illinois residents enrolled in institutions In their home state: 36,023
About 55% of Illinois HS graduates (who attend a 4-year institutions) stay in-state at public or private schools.
To increase the number of students that stay in-state, you have to increase capacity (that 48,510 number) and demand. Increasing capacity takes funding, and that’s not going to happen as long as demand is soft (outside of UIUC and a few of the privates).
For fun, here’s the 1992 data:
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d95/dtab199.asp
That year, about 67% of Illinois HS graduates (who attend a 4-year institutions) stay in-state at public or private schools.
The overall U.S ratio of all first-time students enrolled in their home state has stayed the same since 1992, at 74%. That fact doesn’t really sync with the NY times article… :-?
@Zinhead, it’s almost impossible for OOS students to get merit scholarships to UW-Madison (the only one I know of is a hip-hop/spoken word scholarship), but yes, it’s possible for many other nearby B10/FBS schools to be the same or cheaper than U of I.
@PurpleTitan UW-Madison plans on significantly increasing merit aid (for in-state and OOS students). It plans to join the “Merit” game…
^That’s a change (and a smart one, too). Wasn’t the case in the past, though.
Many states have reciprocal or lower cost tuition agreements with nearby states, or just low cost for OOS students which may account for a large portion of the intrastate migration. In many cases, such as the midwestern states, colleges located in another state are often closer too.
^^Exactly. The 'Zonas provide some sort of grant to Calif kids who apply early, and before the $ runs out; the grant offsets most of the OOS fees.
“Illinois does have a large international student base, about 17% of undergrads”
Yes. The problem is that these students are a larger proportion of the seats that are allocated to high demand majors in engineering and business that, on average, lead to higher employment and better salaries.
“To increase the number of students that stay in-state, you have to increase capacity (that 48,510 number)”
That is not true. UIUC could stop spending Illinois tax dollars on engineering and business school capacity that they then sell off to China. Now it is often referred to as University of Illinois - University of China. China understands that these job creating jobs majors benefit their broader economy, and is amazed that we, stupidly and shortsightedly, are willing to sell these seats off to them.
In-state students are more likely to be given the “opportunity” to choose from the leftover, less popular majors that, on average, lead to lower salaries, higher underemployment, and higher unemployment.
“Second, I disagree that the campus is “not very attractive”. For those who haven’t been on campus check out the link and decide for yourself. http://www.onlyinyourstate.com/illinois/drone-footage-il/”
I am not talking about architecture that is attractive to 50 year old adults. I am talking about what is attractive to the target market of 17-18 year old students. You don’t often hear potential students saying that the campus really impressed them. It is all about the perception of the customer and what matters to them.
"To me there seems to be two camps where the anger emanates…
(1.) those who didn’t get into their desired major and
(2.) those who do get in with their desired major, but find it unaffordable or less attractive from a cost standpoint."
I would not call it anger. I would say that there is a lot of frustration that stems from having to pay taxes to support seats that are then sold to foreign students, while good in-state or OOS candidates (but still Americans) are disproportionately rejected from majors that have a higher probability of leading to employment and good salaries.
Even for the in-state students that are admitted, UIUC does things that make the school unappealing / unattractive to instate students, both from a cost standpoint, and also from a bureaucratic standpoint, because they would prefer to sell that seat to a foreign student at a higher price.
Both of my college students were admitted to engineering, D1 to CS, and D2 to ChemE, but both are attending elsewhere because of bureaucratic UIUC policies that cause it to be unappealing and uncompetitive to in-state students, even when they are admitted. UIUC’s game is to get in-state tax dollars because citizens want an affordable world-class public university in-state, then try to make it as unattractive as possible to instate students who are admitted go elsewhere and they can sell the seat to foreigners to get more money to support the bloated and inefficient bureaucracy.
“So while I understand why these people vent, it doesn’t take away from the opportunities and the quality of the experience for those who are fortunate enough to attend UIUC.”
I am glad the Chinese are having a great experience and a good time on my nickel.
Ha - I SWEAR, on my facebook this morning, a friend of mine who went to UIUC posted a throwback picture of her and her husband in front of some statue that says Alma Mater on the UIUC campus with a comment about how they’d met there and love the campus! I have to say, I’m in the “eh” category. Wisconsin and Indiana are far more attractive IMO and have much more of a fun college town feel to them. I’ve not been to Iowa so can’t talk about that.
Ben Franklin described New Jersey as “a keg tapped at both ends.” It was true then; it is still true today.
California is unique in their thinking about flagships. The kids at my kids’ school do not seem to perceive UCSB or UCSD as being less “flagshippy” than Arizona or Oregon. Possibly because they know they are as hard ot get in to based on history at the high school? They definitely know UCB and UCLA are even harder but they don’t seem to have any disdain for the next tier of UC schools. Even CalPoly garners a lot of respect.
The international students’ tuition very likely exceeds the school’s spending on their education.
This is probably the case for most state universities with respect to non-resident students (domestic or international).