Illinois 24, Virginia 3 Postgame
Hockey was not included. That was $.50.Even back then it was basketball and then everything else! Point goes to Gritty.
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This. If the team gets good, students will come. Just like they do at other schools with lots of out-of-state, studious students -- Michigan, Wisconsin, Texas, tOSU to name a few.
Several times while watching the game I said to myself, "Who is #17??"
You got it! Unfortunately, the university is no longer a "state" school offering an opportunity for higher education. It is also not even a regional public institution. It is a business. Very sad, yet explainable. I used to be proud to say, "I went to the University of Illinois" and it was understood that meant something. Now it is, "Eh". There no longer is that recognition. I don't care personally because I am well past the need nor caring. My kids are well past the need nor caring. I have no reason to want my grandkids to go there (for any reason whatsoever).
There might be more to this story, and this might not be the thread to figure it out.
It is a circular problem. As legislators listen to constituents complain about their children not getting into UI because of the large number of non-Illinois residents attending the legislators are less inclined to fund UI. Lower funding increases pressure to enroll students who pay higher (eg out of state) tuition. The current push to increase class size to enable the admission of Illinois residents is a direct response to legislative pressure. Hope it works.
I'm not sure this is completely true, although there are aspects of it that are. The fact is, there are more highly credentialed HS students in the state than the UI can take. And while taking out of state or international students is beneficial financially, it is also from a diversity standpoint.
UI is still a very respected school, whether it be instate, regional, national or international. A degree from UI still means a lot
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
That's a good way of describing it.
You can say it, in the same way international students put pressure on kids from big suburban high schools, so too does an emphasis toward diversity, not to mention the increased availability of things like AP classes, ACT/SAT test prep and the like in minority communities. Enrollment has increased, but not by a ton and there are only so many slots.
Plus there's the effect of overall population growth in the relevant age cohorts. Plus the effect of female college enrollment getting larger. Plus the economic conditions pushing people towards college during the aftermath of the Great Recession.
Between the 80's-90's and the 2010's it got just immeasurably, titanically harder for a kid from a big, high-quality suburban high school to get into a selective enrollment college, most dramatically so prestigious in-state flagship schools like UI. Not a UI-specific issue, not even close. This is a gripe happening at every other public school in the Big Ten.
And we have a lot of fathers here who entered college in that previous era and then had kids graduate high school in the 2010's with qualifications that would have waltzed into Harvard when they were kids, yet found the door of their alma mater closed to their legacy kids they'd dreamed of sending down to Champaign. That stinks, I have a great deal of sympathy, I don't blame people for being mad.
It should be noted though, this series of trends peaked in the 2010's and while the bar is still really high (to say nothing of the still ridiculous costs of college), it's no longer shooting upward in the same way and with higher labor demand and smaller populations of teenagers coming, that figures to continue. Always important to be up-to-date about the trendlines.
I will also say, State of Illinois higher education is more than just UIUC. UIUC is thriving by the standards of the industry (just jumped 5 spots up to #41 in the US News rankings yesterday, coincidentally), but the rest of the system is disorganized and not as good as peer states and ought to receive more attention, IMO.
(And again, amid all of this, we sell out SFC and lead the nation in Twitter nutjobs on the basketball side. If you build it, they will come.)
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Interesting tweet from one of our more successful alums:
Meanwhile there's a growing trend of capable kids forgoing college altogether because of cost. I don't know where it's all headed, but it's not good for the average, un-wealthy family from Decatur trying to get their honor student kid into the UI, or any U.