Illinois boosts universities losing students, punishes gainers

Illinois’ public universities have lost 13,062 students during the past 20 years, but three gained. They lost state funding while the losers got more money.

Illinois’ public universities have lost state money when they boosted enrollment, but more money has been pumped into those where fewer students want to study.

Punish the winners and subsidize the losers? Is that the state strategy for recovering the 13,062 students lost in the past 20 years by the 12 state universities?

State data shows 189,791 students enrolled at Illinois’ dozen public universities in the fall, down from 202,853 in 2006. Only three universities gained students during that time, with two of them reporting their highest enrollment in two decades. Half of the schools lost one-third of their students or more.

Thanks to Illinois’ higher education funding model, the universities that lost the largest share of  students saw the largest increases in per-pupil funding. Universities attracting more students lost the most money.

Enrollment hits two-decade lows and highs

Student enrollment at Illinois’ dozen public universities climbed from 185,577 in 2024 to 189,791 in 2025, according to Illinois Board of Higher Education data.

Enrollment at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and University of Illinois Chicago reached their highest levels in two decades. Illinois State University declined slightly from the prior year but still hit its second-highest level since 2006.

Enrollment at Western Illinois University fell to a two-decade low, with Governors State University reporting its second-lowest number since 2006.

The only universities that reported higher enrollment this fall than back in 2006 were UIUC, UIC and ISU. This follows a trend of the UIUC and UIC campuses driving most of the enrollment growth statewide during the past two decades.

UIUC and UIC alone accounted for nearly two-thirds of all enrollment growth in the fall. About 51% of Illinois public university students now attend one of those two schools, compared to 33% in 2006.

Of the remaining nine universities, six lost more than one-third of their students since 2006, with three of those losing more than half. Chicago State University saw the largest percentage decline, losing nearly two-thirds of its students. Northern Illinois University and Southern Illinois University Carbondale lost the most in raw numbers, each topping 9,200 fewer students.

State Rep. Jeff Keicher, former ranking Republican on the Illinois House Higher Education Appropriations Committee, warned the decline is likely to get worse. The state faces a drop-off in the number of students entering high school.

“Naturally matriculating high school seniors from Illinois have been dropping,” Keicher said. “We’re going to lose about one-third of our naturally matriculating population by around 2040. The reason is the birth rate decline that happened after the Great Recession.”

“But we haven’t done anything to adapt our higher education institutions to that changing reality,” Keicher said. “I think we’re setting ourselves up for failure because our expectations are off.”

Public university students by the numbers

Despite enrollment climbing to a decade high, Illinois public universities are serving 13,062 fewer students this fall than they were two decades ago. Enrollment peaked in 2010 before falling to a two-decade low in 2018.

Of the 189,791 students attending public universities this fall, 134,329 were undergraduates while graduate students and professionals made up the rest.

Public universities gained 4,859 undergraduates, which for a fourth consecutive year was the primary driver of fall enrollment growth. The number of graduate students declined by 645, in part because 1,918 international graduate students were lost.

Since IBHE began producing a detailed breakdown of undergraduate students in 2019, the data shows a growing share of students are moving to part-time status or coming from high schools.

It’s no surprise more students are attending part-time.  Full-time state university tuition and fees have risen 66% on average since 2009, outpacing inflation. The price of in-state tuition in Illinois is now the ninth highest in the nation.

This is not because the state underfunds higher education. Illinois spends the second most in the nation per full-time student at its four-year public universities.

The problems stem from an overall decline in enrollment, public pensions eating more of the revenue, high administrative expenses and an outdated university funding model.

Illinois’ funding system needs commonsense reforms

Whether Illinois’ public universities report the highest or lowest enrollment in decades, the share of funding these schools receive will remain the same thanks to Illinois’ outdated higher education funding model.

State appropriations for universities are based on historical precedent, not on enrollment or performance. Each school receives the same percentage increase year after year, regardless of how inefficiently they spend or how poorly they attract students.

Lawmakers went farther in the wrong direction when they pushed a proposal earlier this year. Under House Bill 1581, universities that are growing enrollment could see smaller increases in new state funding, as the formula funnels limited dollars to schools with larger resource gaps.

When students can’t get into their top choice, such as UIUC, many leave the state instead of settling for a shrinking regional school. Illinois reported the second-largest net loss of degree-seeking undergraduates in the U.S., according to the most recent data.

And with future enrollment predicted to plummet by nearly one-third in Illinois by 2041 thanks to declining birth rates and demographic changes, attending a state school could become even more expensive.

Truly fixing university funding means controlling future pension costs, reducing administration and changing the funding formula to reward enrollment and improved performance. This strategic, statewide approach will lower costs and keep young people in the state.

“If we were designing a higher education system in Illinois from scratch today, it would look nothing like what we have in place. We need to look at the next 100 years, not the prior 100, for the solutions,” Keicher said. “We need a panel that is informed but unburdened by legislative motivations to be able to propose a holistic change to what the Illinois higher education system does and how it functions.”

Illinois needs a public university funding formula that rewards growth and success. Based on the state’s heavy investment in higher education, the system should be attractive to more students and better serve the Illinoisans investing in it.