^^ One could make the argument that California has six flagship-level universities: Berkeley, UCLA, UCSD, UCSB, UC-Davis and UC-Irvine.
@Much2learn, the reason why UIUC admits so much internationals is because state funding for UIUC has decreased dramatically.
As for bureaucratic rules, there aren’t good options if there is more demand for a major than there are seats.
You could do what UIUC does, and restrict at the beginning. You could do what many other publics do and restrict after entry (so that entry to a major is competitive). You could not restrict at all, but that likely would lead to many years of college beyond 4 as kids don’t get in to required classes.
Or you could keep the number of students far below capacity, so that students can switch majors easily, but that requires a lot more money to maintain excess capacity.
Much2learn wrote:
That is not true. UIUC could stop spending Illinois tax dollars on engineering and business school capacity that they then sell off to China.
@ucbalumnus "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)."
True, but public state universities are there for State and US students. Plus, they didn’t take the more lucrative option, they took both options: the money from the state and the money from the Intl students. Grrrrr
^^^ sounds like anger to me.
Taxpayer funding for University of Illinois is only around 10-15%. it was dramatically cut in recent years; this is probably true of most state universities across the nation after the recession. Internationals are essentially helping make up for that gap in state funding. UIUC also does very well in the Shanghai world college rankings and STEM rankings which attracts (wealthy) Chinese nationals. I don’t think it’s a bad thing necessarily for a university to have a strong international reputation, especially in China.
I have no real dog in the UIUC fight, my kids were never interested, but I am not sure exactly what the benefit is to me the Illinois taxpayer for UIUC to have a great global reputation, and why do I care about its reputation in China in particular? Many of those “reputations” are built on very little knowledge and there’s often a “I heard of it so it must be good, or I never heard of it so it can’t be any good” mentality, so why would I care?
There are tremendous economic benefits that stem from having great research universities. The international rankings are usually based on research output.
Yeah, but to the point raised earlier, how many can there be in states with this population? MI and WI don’t have prominent private research universities. IL has two already.
Pizzagirl, I’m not sure this thread is the appropriate place to discuss (again) the pros and cons of international students attending American public universities. Personally, I think the university has done a fine job strengthening the aforementioned majors, while dealing with the difficult funding landscape in our state.
As for your question concerning what benefit UIUC is to you as an Illinois taxpayer, I would say, without going into detail, that it is similar to the benefits for a childless, older individual paying taxes for public education in general.
I can attest - I grew up in New Jersey, but went to school in Pennsylvania. Many people from my college were also from New Jersey/New York/Long Island.
Oh, I believe there are benefits of UIUC being a strong state school. I’m not sure why “reputation abroad” is part of that.
I guess, as with all college admissions, reputation helps the school be more selective. Getting the perceived ‘best and brightest’ can provide possible benefits in the future.
I’d prefer it to be more affordable to our state’s students, personally.
There are two ways to make a public university affordable. One is to keep tuition low. The other is to meet full need. Keeping tuition low without meeting full need is of greatest benefit to full-pays, i.e., those from upper middle income households. Meeting full need is of greatest benefit to those with need, i.e., those from low and moderate-income households. Unfortunately, UIUC has the worst of both—it has high tuition relative to many other public flagships, and it doesn’t come close to meeting full need. According to its latest Common Data Set, UIUC meets full need for only 11% of students with need, and on average it meets only 64% of need.
It’s painfully obvious why they enroll as many international students as they do: they need the cash, Restricting the number of internationals wouldn’t be an unambiguous benefit to Illinois residents, and might do more harm than good. Yes, more in-state students could enroll, but other things equal, in-state tuition would need to increase substantially to replace that lost OOS tuition premium—and the financial aid gap would only increase. So you’d probably end up with an even higher percentage of upper-middle-class full-pays, including some who presently don’t make the cut in admissions, while driving away more qualified low- and moderate-income Illinois residents who simply couldn’t afford UIUC and would need to go somewhere more affordable. This is already happening; losing OOS tuition revenue would only make it worse.
Ultimately this gets resolved only if the legislature restores funding (not likely anytime soon, I’d wager), and/or UIUC dramatically increases its endowment (but we’ve already discussed some of the difficulty there with NU and U of C tapping the lion’s share of big philanthropy dollars). Otherwise, UIUC is going to be under tremendous pressure to continue to increase the number of OOS and international students as it chases after tuition revenue.
I was born and raised in New Jersey, but I go to a North Carolina public U. Most OOSers are from Maryland, New Jersey, Virginia, New York, etc.
Regarding the issues with UIUC, they were throughly discussed in the following thread.
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1863357-uw-madison-going-down-p1.html
Here’s a timely link to an article about the University of Illinois campuses. I find the goal of increasing their online enrollment intriguing. http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2016-09-02/ui-officials-weigh-raising-systemwide-enrollment-goal-100000.html