Illinois College Students

 Just under 50% of Illinois high school students going to college leave Illinois to go a 4 year instituion in another state. Of those about 60% go to one of the following states: Wisconsin, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, Michigan, and Ohio. it's not just an SIUC problem, it affects colleges throughout the state. SIUC just got hit a lot harder than most other colleges.

250,000 Fewer

No, not students at SIUC but that is the number of fewer students starting college this year, compared to last year. According to a story I caught on NPR and WSIU this morning, this is a trend that has continued since 2008:  fewer students enrolling in college nationwide for over a decade. 2 major reasons for the trend:

1. ever increasing price of college
2. continually shrinking unemployment rate. As the unemployment rate drops, typically more high school graduates enter the labor marker or an apprenticeship program in order to start earning rather than attending college, thus putting off earning wages for 4 to 6 years.

Response to SIUC Post

In response to my post last week on my thoughts regarding the reasons for the drop in attendance at SIUC, I received the following email, reposted with permission:

I agree that SIUC grew larger than can be sustained, but I believe you’re considering primarily it’s ability to serve the undergraduate needs of the region, as SEMO does. SEMO offers very few graduate courses, and no PhDs that I’m aware of. It’s a very different animal than SIUC.

SIUC is not only a nationally recognized university, but an internationally recognized one. Its graduate programs - particularly at the doctoral level - bring in a great deal of research money (or did until the previous administrations instituted unacceptably strict line control and other regulations that drove off many of the university’s top grant-generating scholars). These programs contribute a great deal to the region through graduate research and internships in many sectors, from social services to environmental and agricultural issues to new technologies. A primarily undergraduate institution like SEMO has very few of these synergies with the region. 

SIUC is also the only university in the state that has both a law school and a medical school (UIC manages the University of Illinois medical school; UIUC manages the system’s law school). 

While SIU is a regionally focused system, it is the only such system in the state, with campuses in Edwardsville and Carbondale. Edwardsville is more comparable to SEMO as it has few if any doctoral programs and primarily services the region. Carbondale is more comparable to UIUC - although you’re correct in noting that it’s fallen behind its ambitions to achieve something close to parity with the state’s flagship Land Grant university. Nonetheless, UIC is the only regional university in the state that ranks ahead of SIUC in doctoral degrees and, until the revision of Carnegie standings, Carnegie status, which is based largely on the number of doctoral programs and research productivity.

SIUC’s long strong suit for many years has been its environmental and natural resources focus, which crosses departments and colleges. Unfortunately, it lost its leading professor due to the previous administration - he took a chairmanship at another university. Hopefully, once the state gets its act together, the current leadership will be able to rebuild this pioneering multi-disciplinary program, as well as rebuild the universities’ other premier programs and its library. SIUC has a hard-earned global reputation; it shouldn’t squander that.

I expect that SIUC should reduce some of its doctoral offerings in deference to increasing quality, but without doctoral programs, the overall ability of the university to thrive and grow will decline.

Administrative Creep

Following up on A Note to the Community, one problem that SIUC had, along with almost every other institution of higher education in the country is administrative creep.

Found this article on the Washington Monthly website, which summarizes the problem. The total spending by colleges and universities tripled between 1975 and 2005 to around $325 billion per year. However, faculty/student ratios remained fairly constant at about 15 or 16 to 1, one faculty member for every 15 students.

In 1975, the administrator/student ratio was 84 to 1, while the professional staffer (admissions officers, information technology specialists, etc.) to student ratio ran about 50 to 1. Jump forward to 2005 and the administrator/student ratio has dropped to 68 to 1 and the professional staff ratio has fallen to 21 to one. Granted, a lot of money has gone into improving and replacing college infrastructure, but twice as much money has gone into expanding administration as has gone into research and faculty.

Wal-Mart U

Interesting article on the deal Wal-Mart struck with online educator American Public University. According to the article, Wal-Mart employees will receive a 15% discount from APU but the course costs are still significantly higher than a community college like John A. Logan. A good counterpoint is this article by Andy Kroll on the problems with for-profit colleges