The big business of education is forever altering the state university systems around the country.  They have become vessels of profit and enrichment for some, and are steadily distancing themselves from the citizenry of the home state.

Hiding behind diversity and internationalism, universities have moved to out of state students and ultimately the international student.  Left out are the in-state students looking for a reasonable cost of a college education from their own state university.

Why does college cost so much?  Why does a professor who gave a lecture to a 200 seat hall ten years ago cost so much more to dispense the same knowledge today?  Most of college-dispensed knowledge is static.  Math, language, economics, literature, etc change little from decade to decade.  Except for the sciences, essentially the base product remains the same.

So why does college cost so much?  Part of the answer is that in-state slots are fewer and fewer, by design. Those who do not get the tuition break for in-state residence must go elsewhere at higher costs.  The result being that a student who couldn’t get into his state university A now pays out of state tuition to state university B.  The student who resides in-state B and couldn’t get into his university now becomes an out of state student at university A.  The money game is easy to see.  Both universities, A and B, get more money. 

The out of state game has now morphed to the out of country game.  It is a gold mine for universities and a blatant displacement of in-state candidates for enrollment.

Take the University of Illinois for example.  The Chicago Tribune reports that Chinese studentsalone will make up 10% of this year’s freshman class.  Their tuition is nearly double that of a resident of the state.  It costs an Illinois student about $35,000 each year for tuition, room and board, fees and books at the U of I. The university charges foreign students $52,000 for the same tuition, room and board, books and fees.

The resident student is being carved from the enrollments for the benefit of the money-hungry administrators.  The Tribune notes that last year the University of Illinois reaped $166 million from international students.  Does anyone really believe that enrollment policies at this school are about internationalism?  That dollar amount has tripled over the past five years.  73% of the graduating class is in-state.  A decade ago it was 90%.  Illinois State Rep. Mike Tryon, noted that the state is spending billions on universities, but the money goes to pensions and not into the classrooms.

Currently only the University of Southern California, a private school, has more international students than the University of Illinois, but they are a private institution with every right to manage their admissions policies

Why do the citizens of Illinois put up with this?  In May of 2006, “the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, pulled the plug on plans to increase its proportion of out-of-state enrollment from the (then) current 10% to 15% of the freshman class because the reaction was so negative.”  But today, 27% of the graduates are out of state or out of country and 10% of the incoming class is from China alone!  Have the wishes of the citizens been served?

Brought to you by the same school system that hired Bill Ayers.  And don’t forget, this is all for the kids and the students.  Except the kids are the heirs of the self-enriching pensioned administrators, and a good portion of the students go back to their home country.  Diversity and internationalism are fuzzy and good, especially when they double the tuition revenue stream to meet the overpromised and exorbitant pension promises passed quietly in dark rooms by nameless people years ago.