I completely agree with this. I have three grown children with college degrees from other Illinois universities that are successful, professional, productive Illinois citizens that could not qualify for admittance to the U of I as highschool graduates. In my opinion that is the U of I's loss and the U of I school management is content to sustain that attitude throughout the state.
More for financial reasons than anything else, but UI has expanded their class sizes and remains the most in-state heavy of all the Big Ten schools. Over the past five years or so the ever-escalating crunch on Chicago suburban high school kids has abated somewhat.
But in general this is not a UI-specific thing, this is just a tale of the higher ed industry and the cultural realities of increased competition of college admissions in America.
I'm glad UI has expanded enrollment, that's the right thing to do even if it may be for the "wrong" reasons.
Pretty sketchy trying to find data but the best place I've seen is the student enrollment page from the Division of Management Information. (
https://www.dmi.illinois.edu/stuenr/)
Lots of information that you have to dig through but it does go back th the early 70s/late 60s for some stuff.
Most other schools have data of some sort on their registrar's page.
So just to be clear on a factual point using that data, of 34,942 enrolled undergraduates this fall, 5,312 are international students, so 15%.
In Fall 2014 (chosen because that was the last class before Tim Killeen became UI President who has been public about wanting to increase enrollment) there were 32,579 total undergrads of which 5,332 were international, a bit over 16%.
Not super dramatic change, but one way to say it is that there are now 20 fewer spots for international HS students and nearly 2,500 more spots for domestic HS students.
And just to say it out loud I don't think any of this has anything to do with our football attendance issues.