From today’s Tribune: “U. of I. considers boost to financial aid”

From today’s Tribune: “U. of I. considers boost to financial aid” September 4, 2014

. . . because enrollment is down, or, at least, enrollment of Illinois freshmen is down by 1,000 students, with a corresponding increase to international student enrollment, according to an article in today’s Tribune reporting on a U. of I. board of trustees committee meeting.

Additional financial aid funding could come from increasing student enrollment in programs that charge more for tuition, such as the College of Engineering, or from increasing the number of higher-paying international students, said Christophe Pierre, the university’s vice president for academic affairs.

And the university is pretty sure it’s losing students because they’re getting good deals at other schools.

Now, the university is already heavily recruiting from full-pay foreign students to pay the bills, to an extent that, a month ago, I questioned whether this would impact the quality of American students’ education.  And increasing the cost of engineering programs?  This seems risky, and a bit “killing the goose that laid the golden egg”-ish, considering that the university’s reputation rests pretty heavily on the engineering department.

Here’s an idea:  how about cutting costs, to enable cutting tuition correspondingly?  According to the reporter, this was so radical as to not even be under discussion.


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