Tom Kacich: Out-of-state enrollment up at UI's Urbana campus

Oct. 6—One question that state legislators frequently ask top University of Illinois officials is why their child/friend's child/constituent's child can't get into the UI when out-of-state students are being admitted in greater numbers. Invariably, the question is prefaced with something like, "I always believed you were the flagship university of Illinois, for Illinois students."

When UI President Tim Killeen was asked about the issue at a legislative hearing in 2015, he responded, "We are still very strong, but there has been a slight erosion (in in-state enrollment), which people have noticed. Our stakeholders have noticed."

That was when 62 percent of the total campus enrollment was from Illinois, including 73 percent of undergraduates. This fall, just 54.8 percent of Urbana-Champaign campus students are from Illinois, according to the university's official enrollment figures. That's down from 58.3 percent in 2019, 63.6 percent in 2014 and 72.8 percent in 2009. (Just for fun, I went back to 1975, when in-state students made up 90.1 percent of Urbana campus enrollment).

The 45.2 percent figure of out-of-state students is inflated by the number of graduate students from outside Illinois or the United States. More than three-quarters of the 20,765 graduate students on campus aren't from Illinois; there are more international grad students on campus (7,736) than in-state grad students (4,921). But that's the hallmark of a top-tier, in-demand research university.

What won't go down easily for exasperated legislators is why the percentage of out-of-state undergraduate students is creeping upward, too. This fall, 72.6 percent of undergrads at the Urbana-Champaign campus are in-state students. Ten years ago, 74.4 percent were from Illinois. Twenty years ago, 88.5 percent of undergrads were from Illinois. (In 1975, in-state residents made up 97.1 percent of the undergraduate student body).

UI officials have never publicly explained this shift in out-of-state enrollment, but it is obviously tied to tuition costs and revenue. Tuition for out-of-state students is twice as much as in-state tuition, and international tuition (there are more than 5,500 international undergrads on campus) is even greater. The increased revenue from non-Illinois students helps pay for things like the Illinois Promise program, in which free tuition is offered to in-state students with low family incomes.

The Urbana-Champaign campus is not alone among elite public universities in seeing its out-of-state enrollment climb. At the University of Michigan, slightly more than half of the 52,855 students on campus this fall aren't from Michigan, and only 53.6 percent of undergrads at Ann Arbor are from the state. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, there are 52,126 students on campus this fall; 54 percent are from out of state.

UCLA, one of the top public universities in the country, is now bound by a state law that gives it higher state appropriations in exchange for working on a number of goals, including enrolling more California students. This fall, for example, UCLA admitted 13,128 freshmen, 8,795 of whom were from California.

Local legislators say they're aware of the growing out-of-state enrollment at the Urbana campus.

"The enrollment trends at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, including the increase in non-Illinois students, reflects broader challenges many universities face," said state Sen. Paul Faraci, D-Champaign, who is chair of the Appropriations-Higher Education Committee. "Legislators remain mindful of ensuring Illinois students have access to quality education within the state, and enrollment trends like this are part of ongoing discussions around funding and university strategies. I will continue to monitor these issues as part of our efforts to support higher education in Illinois."

Veteran state Sen. Chapin Rose, R-Mahomet, said he's been hearing the complaints for years.

"There's absolutely no doubt that the admissions issue of foreign-national and out-of-state versus in-state is a huge issue for the U of I in Springfield," Rose said. "And I'm past the point of trying to defend it, because it's indefensible."

But Rose said he's even more concerned about his findings that show Urbana campus students are subsidizing students at the UI's Chicago campus. He said the UI is internally allocating $10,073 per undergraduate student to the Chicago campus, but only $7,483 per undergrad at Urbana.

So here's a heads-up for Killeen and Urbana campus Chancellor Robert Jones in advance of next spring's appropriations hearings: That golden-oldie question about out-of-state admissions will be back. And perhaps it would help to explain the university's tuition and revenue strategy.