U of I proposes a tuition freeze!! :)

[YZamyatin]

is a double-edged sword for in-state students. In fact I have heard the following comparison for Engineering and Business: they are like private universities within a large state school. The higher the demand for admittance makes it much more difficult for very capable in-state students to get in.

aahhh, now there us the rub (and you have hit the nail on the head with the determining factor for the behavior of the spineless dimwitted bureaucrats that run this University). Here is the answer…

Capable does not equal ‘good enough to be admitted’. Never has and never will be at the greatest Universities.

How many thousands of Michigan residents are “capable” yet don’t get in to Go Blue?

The day UIUC stops worrying about the ‘feelings’ [of the parents] of those capable-but-not-good-enough to be admitted is the day they reach the next level. They have a high school population second to very few states in producing massive quantities of top tier students. UIUC is just sitting there waiting to be the next Michigan, Virginia or Berkeley; waiting for someone with a backbone to say “enough is enough, your kid is good but not good enough, sorry”.

But no… Instead, we get a big “NO” to the common app (against recommendations from the enrollment management group hired to advise them). We also get a big no on their other recommendation to “Redesign the current freshman scholarship programs to increase competitiveness in recruiting and enrolling high achieving and diverse students by offering more four-year scholarships and framing communications to highlight a four-year package” emphasis mine. Finally we get the mind numbingly idiotic decision to cancel the EA program which basically SCREAMS “we are a mediocre generic state school, hear us not roar!”

Why were all these, and more, decisions made to ensure that UIUC does not become more selective and essentially guarantee that a large portion (not saying a majority, but certainly too many compared to, let’s say, Michigan or California) of the most talented in-state student will matriculate elsewhere?

Answer: It takes a backbone to say no. It takes a backbone to tell people they are not good enough. It takes a backbone to say that ‘we are ready to move to the next level and you will not be coming along for the ride’. Michigan made this decision ages ago and look where they are now. With current management, Illinois will never make that decision, and a generation from now they will be great Engineering school with 30% enrollment form China and a decent Business school who is still losing student to schools like Indiana that offer a few shekels of merit aid.

Not the end of the world but they could be so much more.

[88jm19]

hmmm… I don’t think Michigan is a fair comparable due to its huge endowment. That chart I referenced earlier shows Michigan benefits from an $8.4 billion endowment compared to UIUC’s $1.9 billion.

However, I do know Indiana is being very aggressive in its pursuit of top Illinois residents. They’re offering direct admission to Kelley for instance, with lower stats (ACT 32) and throwing money at students to make the cost around the level of UIUC. I believe most of the students leaving Illinois for Kelley are those who were not early admitted…capable but not good enough for early admit. In this case selectivity hurt yield since many of these students are accepted later in the admission process. (I have little knowledge about the rest of IU.)

Now if I am following you, you are concerned top rated in-state students are going to neighboring state schools based on price. And you believe if tuition were lower or there was more merit aid that the university would retain these students, thereby improving UIUC’s yield. Well, I think that is interesting, but in the current fiscal climate a nearly impossible thing to attain without an enormous influx of $s.

As for your prediction, “a generation from now they will be great Engineering school with 30% enrollment form China and a decent Business school who is still losing student to schools like Indiana that offer a few shekels of merit aid”, we shall see. I think Engineering will continue on its path, hopefully raising the bar across the college, not just CS. The discussion around internationals/diversity could be a new thread. (I really liked this article on the subject: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/01/07/uiuc-growth-number-chinese-students-has-been-dramatic)

The College of Business does have obstacles to face due to funding. However, they are trying to address them and I believe they will continue to partner with companies to bridge the gap. The overall economic health will be a large factor at UIUC.

Anyway, my prediction is that years from now UIUC will still excel in the areas of engineering and business with growth in ACES. However, I’m thinking majors with lower ROIs will suffer. I recently had a discussion with friends about whether I would have attended UIUC. I was a secondary ed high school science teacher. Back then my parents paid for my 4 yrs at a total of around $25K. I got a job straight out of school in one of the most affluent Chicago suburbs at a salary in the mid-$20Ks. Nowadays, a student who wants to teach will incur a school bill around $120K. The starting salary in my old school district is $53K. My how times have changed.

[YZamyatin]

I hear you re: comparisons to Michigan, but I am not really comparing directly to Michigan, just using it to illustrate what the ultimate goal vis-s-vis in-state students’ perception of their state flagship should be. There are 24 schools ranked ahead of Michigan (USNWR just to pick one list) with smaller, and in some case much smaller, endowments. So while a gigantic endowment would be very helpful in trying to buy status, it is by no means a necessary prerequisite to improving status.

The point is that UIUC should be a top choice school for more top level Illinois high school grads, and one way to define top choice is ‘a school worth waiting for if you are deferred’ (it doesn’t have to be a first choice over Harvard/MIT). In this regard they have several advantages over Michigan (the state, not the school).

First, there are many more high school grads coming out of Illinois than Michigan, something like 40k per year. This is a huge pool of potential students. While the average test scores are lower in Illinois, these schools don’t draw from the average, and the right tail has a lot more students in Illinois than in Michigan from a notional standpoint.

Second, there is an absolute embarrassment of riches in Illinois re: high quality high schools. Check out this list…

https://k12.niche.com/rankings/public-high-schools/best-overall/

Holy cow, there are 9 Illinois schools in the top 30 and 16 in the top 100 with only 1 from Michigan!

Now maybe this list is biased somehow, I don’t know, I just saw it referenced on Business Insider. But even if it is biased, wow, that is a stunning advantage in high quality high schools.

Lastly, Illinois OOS tuition is much lower than that of Michigan. While not really an advantage “over” Michigan, it is important to note that it will not cost Illinois very much to offer in-state tuition as a merit deal to entice top level OOS applicants to attend.

All in all, when you go over the numbers, it is kinda shocking that UIUC gets lumped in with so many other Midwest flagships as far as status goes. They have so much more to work with and should be a top five in the nation public school. New York is kinda in the same position, with no real top level flagship and lots of exported top students. This question is, does UIUC care and is there anything they can do about it?

I think they don’t care and mostly ignore things they should be doing something about. Wow, look at that article from IHE where they basically admit they were incompetent in recruiting OOS students and had to race to China to get non-resident money in the door. How is this anything but extremely embarrassing?

[YZamyatin]

Now if I am following you, you are concerned top rated in-state students are going to neighboring state schools based on price.

Ha, I have been blathering on so much in this thread I can barely follow myself.

I think you overestimate how much it would cost to throw some real incentives out there. Can you guess how much it would cost Illinois to give every single incoming domestic OOS student in-state tuition for next year’s incoming class?

It is a rounding error compared to their endowment. And you wouldn’t give it to everyone. There is no real need to do so for the Engineering and Business schools, which make up the vast majority of OOS students and are already well regarded enough to attract a diverse student body.

To make a real change it would be expensive, and cut into the endowment, but we are talking $100 million over many years, not $1 billion (I would go the full Honors College route and spend $250 million, but I have a backbone). Like I said, it won’t be easy or cheap, but go big or go home, and you don’t need an $8 billion endowment to make it happen.

With all due respect to schools like Indiana, Purdue, Wisconsin, Ohio State, etc. Illinois should not be considered a direct peer. It should certainly not be losing any more than a token number of cross-admits. If you look at Illinois ex-Engineering school, it would be ranked far below these other flagships. That’s just incredibly embarrassing for a state that produces such an incredible number of top high school grads with no other flagship to compete with.