Universities in Illinois Extend Tuition Freezes to Stem Enrollment Slides

Few state universities these days can afford to turn down additional tuition dollars, but the University of Illinois system is planning to do just that. Last week Timothy L. Killeen, president of the system, proposed extending for another year an in-state tuition freeze that has been in effect for the three-campus system since the fall of 2014.

In a written statement, Mr. Killeen said that the freeze was intended to “help keep doors of opportunity open for Illinois students and hold down costs to keep them here at home to study.” The latter half of that equation may be especially important after a prolonged state-budget standoff contributed to an enrollment drop that persisted last fall at many of the state’s public colleges and universities.

The impasse over spending between Bruce V. Rauner, Illinois’s Republican governor, and the Democratic-controlled legislature stifled state institutions for two years before it ended last summer. The budget deadlock led to layoffs, furloughs, and other emergency measures across the state’s public colleges and universities.

As the stalemate dragged on for months, then for years, it took a toll on perceptions of public higher education in the Land of Lincoln. Despite some allocations of emergency funding from the state, enrollment across public institutions began to slip in the fall of 2016.

The trend has continued, with the state’s public universities experiencing a 2.2-percent dip in full-time enrollment in the fall, compared with the previous year; the drop was steeper for the state’s community colleges, at 3.4 percent. A few campuses saw enrollment increases — the University of Illinois at Chicago’s rose almost 5 percent, and first-time freshman enrollment went up almost 23 percent. Enrollment at the University of Illinois’s flagship Urbana-Champaign campus increased by about 3 percent, though the number of first-time freshmen fell by 1 percent.

But enrollment at many public universities stayed flat or fell. The University of Illinois at Springfield saw total enrollment drop almost 9 percent, with the number of first-time freshmen declining by more than 7 percent.

At the state’s regional universities, the enrollment drop was often worse. At Western Illinois University, fall undergraduate enrollment declined from 8,543 in 2016 to 7,599 in 2017, a drop of about 11 percent. The number of first-time freshmen fell from 1,527 in the fall of 2016 to 1,206 in 2017, a drop of about 21 percent. At both Governors State University and Chicago State University, total fall enrollment declined by about 11 percent from 2016 to 2017.

Illinois already had the second-highest rate of high-school graduates leaving to attend college in other states. Nearly 17,000 new graduates of Illinois high schools went elsewhere to study in 2014, compared with the 29,000 students who left New Jersey that year.

Tuition freezes have been a key strategy to retain the state’s students. Chicago State and Governors State kept tuition flat for the current academic year. The University of Illinois’s Board of Trustees will vote on January 18 on whether to extend the in-state tuition freeze.

While most public universities in the state have yet to field budget proposals for the coming year, Northern Illinois University has already approved a plan to keep its in-state tuition frozen next year, for the fourth year in a row, and to lower student fees by less than 1 percent.

Many aspects of life in Illinois have suffered as a result of the budget standoff, but the damage to public higher education may have moved its state universities closer to an inflection point. They have been hurt by a lack of stable state support, which has made them less attractive to some students. A tuition freeze may foster greater access and attract more students, but it could hobble attempts to stabilize and rebuild without further investment from the state. It is not an enviable cycle to be in.

Lee Gardner writes about the management of colleges and universities, higher-education marketing, and other topics. Follow him on Twitter @_lee_g, or email him at lee.gardner@chronicle.com.

Correction (1/7/2018, 1:50 p.m.): This article originally referred mistakenly to an 11-percent drop in total enrollment at Western Illinois University. The drop was in undergraduate enrollment, and the text has been corrected.

Correction (1/8/2018, 11:55 a.m.): The original headline on this article referred incorrectly to enrollment slides at the University of Illinois. The slides have happened at other universities in the state. The headline has been changed.