UW-Madison going down??

Parents Forum
101

We know that currently UW-Madison has 8,400 OOS undergraduates (about 1/3 of the total undergraduate population), of which 2,863 are from Minnesota, but 2,483 are from Illinois. Then it drops down to 547 from California, 491 from NY, 188 from Maryland…

Clearly OOS Illinois students (mostly from Cook county) are very important to UW-Madison.

Which ties back in to why UW-Madison is about to start increasing merit aid to OOS students.

The high stat kids (ACT 34-36) are likely looking at schools like Michigan for Engineering. Looking at Ann Arbor’s Fall 2015 enrollment, the top three OOS states are California (2,383), NY (2,143) and Illinois (2,056, of which 332 are in the COE). Then you’ll have high stat kids going to schools based on cost, such as Alabama (2.2% of UA’s total enrollment is from Illinois). Another example would be high stat kids going to schools like Georgia Tech or Ohio State due to scholarships offers. Private schools like Vanderbilt and Duke look like a solid deal, compared to UIUC’s cost. Really high state requirements for entrance, coupled with the highest in-state tuition rate in the country, will create competition for these students.

Fun Fact: of the current 10,600+ students in the COE, close to 6,100 are non-Illinois residents (and almost 4,000 are international students).

102

FYI, Wisconsin and Minnesota have a tuition exchange program in which students from either state can get significantly reduced tuition in the other state. It gives students from both states affordable access to two top-notch universities.

103

“It seems to me that in the case of UIUC the hard work is building a substantive school like that and that is done already. It just needs a marketing/image boost.”

I’m not certain marketing is the problem-- admission to UIUC is already too difficult for a lot of in-state students. How would boosting the school’s image solve that? They’re already turning away many high-stats applicants.

104

@Gator88NE My response was to the statement that UIUC was an undesirable fallback to high stats students from IL (Chicagoland) and there were a dozen different OOS engineering options. For the private and OOS public schools you have listed UIUC IS tuition is most likely still a better deal to attend a top 5 undergrad engineering school.To label UIUC to be a universally undesirable option is a misnomer.

@Zinhead I know many IL high school students, some very well, that are excited and proud to be Illini. Some students do not desire/dream to attend their state’s flagship (like everyone else in their high school) no matter what the state.Not sure how you are going to solve the issue of a single public flagship in IL. If Champaign-Urbana is such an undesirable collegiate location, what is your plan to increase the stature of schools located in DeKalb, Macomb, Carbondale, Charleston, Normal, Decatur, Peoria, …

Which reminds me of a high school friend, who when asked what college he would be attending would respond, “I’m gong to school out east”. He was attending Eastern IL.

My son is very happy @ UIUC and it’s the school he most desired to attend. A fair number of his high school classmates from suburban Chicago also attend UIUC and it was their first choice. It’s close enough that he can conveniently and inexpensively come home on an occasional weekend and every school break (getting dropped off/picked up at a mall parking lot a few miles away). He lives in a new, spacious dorm and attends classes in a brand new ECE building on a dedicated engineering quad (that is not a bus ride away from the main campus). His roommates are from CA, NJ, and OR, but he has met many other students from IL.

105

When you look at the University of Illinois, you need to remember all three campuses are funded together. The one exception is UIC’s health care schools. UIUC and UIC are the two large public research schools in the state at respectfully numbers 1 and 3 in research dollars in the state.
So far, they are saying both Chicago and Urbana have seen large increases in number of applications this year. http://news.uic.edu/freshman-applications-up-across-university-system Hopefully, they won’t over enroll students.

UIUC hasn’t been changing its marketing but UIC has been changing. UIUC is certainly seen as a party school. UIC is just trying to enroll more OOS students and get more name recognition outside of health care. UIC’s in state percentage is at an all time low at about 95%.

106

I would expect “serve the public” would mean to provide quality education to students within the state. When 58 percent of the COE (Post #100), which is UIUC’s flagship department, comes from OOS or are NRA, and they are turning away kids with a 34 and 35 on the ACT, that is not serving the state. Illinois and the Chicago area pump out a large amount of high-stat kids, and many of them want to go UIUC but can’t because the chairs are already taken.

That is wonderful, and there is no question that UIUC COE and COB are great departments. However, at our high school, the one sweatshirt or Tshirt you almost never see is from Illinois. You see lots of Big 10, ND, Missou and Alabama gear, but nothing for UIUC, even from kids whose parents went there. We send more than 50 kids there a year, and they are not enthused about the school whatsoever.

107

In Wisconsin “serve the state” involves many programs that have nothing to do with the campus or students there. Something I’m not sure the current governor would understand. There are many programs including Agriculture Extension that benefit farmers and gardeners et al. Easily found on the UW website.

108

COE and COB are not departments. They are separate colleges.

Make up your mind whether “many of them want to go UIUC but can’t because the chairs are already taken” or “they are not enthused about the school whatsoever”.

109

“many of them want to go UIUC but can’t because the chairs are already taken” = UIUC COE/COB

“they are not enthused about the school whatsoever”. = UIUC Everything else.

110

@rienrah “I’m not certain marketing is the problem-- admission to UIUC is already too difficult for a lot of in-state students. How would boosting the school’s image solve that? They’re already turning away many high-stats applicants.”

They are turning away high stats applicants because the fill most of the valuable seats with foreign or OOS applicants. Perhaps they are happy that they don’t have the best image to in-state students? IDK. That backfires when they don’t have strong in-state support when Rauner cuts their funding.

Students know they will get a great education at Illinois, but they don’t think they will have a great experience there. They think that they can get both at Wisconsin, Michigan, Northwestern, etc. In reality, I think the experience is similar, but the other schools are doing a better job of selling the experience.

111

@Zinhead

But that is not the sole mission of the school. Educating is just one part of the mission along with creating knowledge and applying knowledge. It does not specify solely educating in-state students. It does state its vision is to “To create a brilliant future for the University of Illinois in which the students, faculty and staff thrive and the citizens of Illinois, the nation and the world benefit…”

Couple that with the fact that state funding is becoming such a small percentage of the operating budget, I don’t understand why you believe a state school should give strong preferential admission to in-state students. I’m curious what “number of slots” would be acceptable to you?

http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2015-02-18/rauner-budget-would-mean-ui-loses-third-state-funding.html
In this article it states that the total budget is $5.64 billion. The state (Rauner) is proposing to cut funding to $458.5 million from $667.5 million. Most of the revenue is not coming from the state!

UIUC’s mission statement: The University of Illinois will transform lives and serve society by educating, creating knowledge and putting knowledge to work on a large scale and with excellence. https://www.uillinois.edu/about/mission

UW-Madison mission statement: it’s long so here’s the link. http://www.wisc.edu/about/mission/

UF’s mission statement: https://catalog.ufl.edu/ugrad/current/uf-mission/Pages/home.aspx

@Much2learn

As an in-state resident (suburb of Chicago) I disagree with your blanket statement. It’s not true in my experience…especially if you’re talking about Wisconsin. Are we now throwing Northwestern in the mix? (Perhaps you’re thinking sports?)

112

Recent issues with the UIUC administration (several!), as well as in the Athletic Dept (poor showings in both bball and football) have certainly not helped from a marketing aspect, either. This can be a big deal for many IS kids. Maybe not the engineering kids, but still. :slight_smile:

113

Yeah, people don’t seem to get real excited about golf. :))

114

@Gator88NE “Fun Fact: of the current 10,600+ students in the COE, close to 6,100 are non-Illinois residents (and almost 4,000 are international students).”

This may be part of the problem. Why is a state school giving the majority of its most valuable seats to international and OOS students? That is not good.

115

@Much2learn They do it for the revenue! Also, I should note that many OOS/International students are Grad students. The grad program has 418 residents and 2,763 non-residents (of which 2,091 are international students). The numbers are not nearly that bad for undergraduates (4226 vs.3325, 56% are Illinois residents).

116

A couple of points on the budget. The above number ($5.64 billion) is for the UIC system, including UIUC.

https://www.obfs.uillinois.edu/common/pages/DisplayFile.aspx?itemId=99447

In the 2015 budget, $667.5 million was state direct appropriation, but it’s better to compare it to the other major source of income, Tuition and fees, which was $1,064,232 million.

But there is another key source of funding/expense that’s covered by the state. Out of that $5.64 billion, an additional $1,2 billion in funds are appropriations to the “State Universities Retirement System (SURS) to pay the employer’s contribution to SURS and to the Department of Healthcare and Family Services to pay a portion of the cost of providing health insurance to employees paid from state and selected restricted funds.”

Surprise, surprise, an Illinois state institution has a retirement funding issue.

If you keep digging into that $5.64 billion, you’ll find it’s inflated with revenue from the hospital, research and other “Auxiliaries and Departmental Operations”. If you put those aside, and just look at the revenue and cost associated with student instruction, that state appropriations becomes much more significant.

By the way, the state isn’t spending Billions on the UIC system, to benefit the “world”, it’s expecting to benefit, first and foremost, the citizens of Illinois.

117

Both are true depending on who is applying. The high stat kids who try for MIT, Harvard, Vanderbilt, WashU, Stanford, Cornell, etc. see UIUC as a safety. Most get into and prefer Michigan, but can’t go because of cost. For them, UIUC is not a destination, it is a fallback.

On the other hand, there are a number of kids who get into UIUC, but don’t get direct acceptances to COE or COB. These are very qualified kids who have to go the Purdue, Michigan State, Iowa or Missouri route, and their parents are very bitter that UIUC would rather have kids from China than Illinois.

UIUC needs a new mission statement. Public universities are funded to provide benefits to the residents of their state. If UIUC is so concerned with benefiting the world, they should go to Beijing and see if Chinese government is willing to support them.

In the meantime, lets take a look at scandals associated with UIUC:

2009 Clout Scandal - 7 out of 9 UI trustees resigned over preferential admissions scheme.
2012 Law School Scandal - University fined $250,000 for reporting inflated LSATs over many years. Dean of Law School resigns.
2012 Architect Scandal - $4.6 million contract awarded to an architectural firm partially owned by the husband of a key administrator who oversees the planning of campus construction projects
2012 Faculty Unrest - New reform president resigns after 20 months due to faculty revolt
2013 Saliata Affair - UIUC hires and fires anti-semite. Pays him $875,000 to settle lawsuit
2015 Email Scandal - Chancellor and Provost resign after it was found they used private email to circumvent public scrutiny
2015 Sports Scandal - Head football coach fired right before the season starts due to mis-treatment of players. Athletic director fired shortly thereafter.

Like most of Illinois government, it is very clear that UIUC has been mis-managed for quite some time. This is the same management that dramatically increased the number of OOS and NRA students, and has sold out Illinois residents.

As a resident of Illinois, I look with envy at parents living in Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, and Iowa who have competent, quality, affordable schools to accommodate their kids.

118

According to our schools Naviance information for the past four years, we had more than 2,000 graduates during that time period who went on to four year schools. 75 percent of them went out of state. According to the following website, 39 percent of Illinois college students leave to go out of state which is well above the national average.

https://ink.niche.com/states-highest-percentage-high-school-students-leave/

Illinois is not a small, rural state like the others on that list with higher rates of students leaving, and Illinois residents should not be relying on Wisconsin, Iowa, Indiana, Missouri and Michigan to educate our kids. Illinois residents pay high taxes for a poorly performing university system, and because of the incompetency of that system, a large percentage of Illinois residents have to pay high OOS tuition rates in neighboring states. Illinois residents end up supporting two college systems, our home state and the state we send our kids to college.

As for the number of slots, a hard cap of 10 percent per department for OOS/NRA students seems reasonable as that is what other successful university systems have implemented.

119

Fact is today most funding for most state flagships DOES NOT come from the home state. They already get more than they are willing to pay for in most states. Often under 20% excluding any hospitals.

120

I’m seeing some interesting parallels between folks in Illinois holding the attitude that UIUC should reserve the majority of incoming class seats for in-staters no matter how minuscule the portion of state funding in relation to the university’s budget and the financial state of a Long Island county where the mostly upper/upper-middle class citizens expect and demand services at a high level while simultaneously voting in politicians who promise and implement tax cuts which directly conflict with the cost of providing those demanded high level services.

And some of those citizens wonder WHY their county has been in state receivership for a few decades and is about to go back to state receivership after they voted out a fiscally responsible county executive in favor of one whose tax cuts ended up opening up a large financial hole which got the attention of the state’s financial oversight board…especially considering that county’s previous decades-long history of being in state receivership.