(09-29-2016 06:55 AM)Kittonhead Wrote:  EIU only has 7,000 students.

That to me is an inefficient size for a directional public school.

WIU I see it more since that is more of a geographically distinct region and it has a branch campus of its own.

EIU's enrollment is similar to the enrollments at most of the public universities in the upper midwest. Almost every public university in Wisconsin, outside of Madison and Milwaukee, are around this size. They range from 2500-12000 students give or take. Michigan Tech and Northern Michigan are around the same size. Most of the Minnesota public universities are also in the same range, but for UM, Mankato and St. Cloud. So, EIU's enrollment is not that unusual or small for a public university. The smaller enrollment is somewhat unusual for a D-1 public university. But for UWGB, I don't think any of the other small publics in WI, MN or MI are D-1, but for hockey.

(09-28-2016 04:11 PM)GoldenWarrior11 Wrote:  Beyond not having enough students, faculty and money to stay open, having both the president (unjustified spending) and interim president (plagiarism on dissertation), and not having the other basic fundamentals of a university, the school is sham created by political figures for more money into their pockets.

Wasn't that their Provost, which is kind of worse, given they are the academic ombudsman? I read up on that thing, and apparently she was already signing "PhD" on stuff before she earned it.

****, how does a board hire so many bad people? Calhoun and Pogue were both steps in the right direction, and they were outta there in flashes.

(09-29-2016 09:50 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  Now, I would say that the state would be well-served to beef up the University of Illinois at Springfield. It has historically been more of a non-residential school for upper-level students (generally people that graduated with their associate's degrees from community colleges), but its location in the state capitol plus the University of Illinois connection/branding makes it seem like a good opportunity to expand it to a more viable 4-year residential option. They're admitting more freshmen now, but UIS needs a lot more residential housing to make it feel like less of a commuter school.

UIS is an interesting situation - started as a Senior College called Sangamon State (no freshmen or sophomores), with Masters degrees aimed at Governmental employees. It is situated adjacent to Lincoln Land CC, and was intended as a compliment. It started up when I was in HS (and the campus is physically located near my HS). It's never been thought of as a residential college, but does now have some housing, but as you said, not nearly enough. Not sure what untapped market there is though - ISU and SIU-E are only 1+hour away, UIUC 1.5 hours, and WIU and EIU 2 hours

(09-28-2016 07:46 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  

(09-28-2016 06:45 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(09-28-2016 06:01 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  The state should cut its losses and allow students to transfer to UIC. It's only 12 miles away and is big enough to absorb them. From the article, it sounds like Chicago State has a decent pharmacy program so maybe that program should also move to UIC.

This would allow funding to be diverted to UIC & help make it the true "second option" that state politicians have been looking for. Other than Illinois State it's the only school big and diverse enough to be able to realistically achieve that status with only a moderate increase in spending.

This is a bit harsh, but UIC isn't going to want anything to do with Chicago State transfers. UIC is a *significantly* larger step up academically from Chicago State on the undergrad side and in a completely different universe on the graduate program side (where UIC is considered to be a legitimately upper tier school when it comes to its grad programs, particular in STEM fields). If anything, adding Chicago State transfers would detract UIC from becoming the "second option" to the University of Illinois flagship. The State of Illinois isn't losing the types of students that go to Chicago State to other states. As someone pointed out, Chicago State has an abysmal graduation rate of 11%. Instead, the students that are leaving the state because of the lack of second option are disproportionately the ones that can't get into the U of I flagship but their grades and test scores are way above the current standards for UIC and Illinois State (and Chicago State isn't even anywhere close to being on the radar for them - you'd have an easier time recruiting those students to go to school in Alaska). Those are the kids that are enrolling as out-of-state students at Iowa, Indiana, Purdue, Mizzou and other nearby flagship/flagship-equivalents en masse.

The closer and somewhat reasonable academic peer to Chicago State is Northeastern Illinois University, but it's on the complete opposite side of town on the far North Side (whereas Chicago State is on the far South Side). Remember that the student population at Chicago State consists almost entirely non-traditional older commuter students that live on the South Side, are working full-time while taking classes and are generally completely reliant upon public transportation to go anywhere. Realistically, the students that are going to Chicago State now simply aren't going to be commuting up to Northeastern Illinois as those CTA bus trips would take (without exaggeration) a couple of hours or more with multiple connections and it would take an hour even if you have a car. (People need to remember that Chicago is a HUGE city both population-wise and in physical size - the distance from CSU to NEIU is 25 miles even though they're within the same city limits and that entire route consists of densely packed urban population and development.)

Now, maybe the solution is to merge Chicago State into NEIU and then make the existing Chicago State campus into the South Side branch campus of NEIU. That might address some of the financial burden since NEIU's enrollment has actually held up relatively well (and they have stronger cash flow from people that live on the North Side seeking grad programs, such as teachers looking for master's degrees to move up on their pay scales).

It's sad because this is all about the ineptitude at the state level regarding college funding. Chicago State is the canary in the coal mine - you're going to see this play out in many other states across the country sooner rather than later. What makes it worse from a societal perspective is that the public schools with the wealthier alumni bases (such as the flagships) can weather the storm, whereas the schools that serve the non-traditional students and less affluent populations where commuting to the local school is literally they ONLY way that they could ever afford to go to college are the ones that will get completely squeezed.

I agree that Chicago State isn't a peer of UIC. But if you're closing down a predominantly black school and giving their budget to UIC, you've got to throw the current students a bone.

Chicago State only has 4,300 students and not all of them will transfer. Unlike other schools in the area, UIC is big enough (29,000 students) that accepting a couple thousand transfer students won't impact them too much. It's nothing that $36 million in annual state funds won't cure.

I think it bears noting that a major part of the problem for all of the schools partly funded by the State of Illinois is that the state hasn't actually been paying the millions of dollars theoretically committed to those institutions. Without a budget, the state is simply withholding those funds, requiring all those campuses to dip into their emergency reserves to pay their bills. For some of those campuses, they are basically "eating their seed corn" right now until that budget impasse is broken.

Consolidating administrative units will save a few bucks, but not nearly enough to stem the enrollment erosion.

(09-29-2016 11:58 AM)dbackjon Wrote:  

(09-29-2016 09:50 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  Now, I would say that the state would be well-served to beef up the University of Illinois at Springfield. It has historically been more of a non-residential school for upper-level students (generally people that graduated with their associate's degrees from community colleges), but its location in the state capitol plus the University of Illinois connection/branding makes it seem like a good opportunity to expand it to a more viable 4-year residential option. They're admitting more freshmen now, but UIS needs a lot more residential housing to make it feel like less of a commuter school.

UIS is an interesting situation - started as a Senior College called Sangamon State (no freshmen or sophomores), with Masters degrees aimed at Governmental employees. It is situated adjacent to Lincoln Land CC, and was intended as a compliment. It started up when I was in HS (and the campus is physically located near my HS). It's never been thought of as a residential college, but does now have some housing, but as you said, not nearly enough. Not sure what untapped market there is though - ISU and SIU-E are only 1+hour away, UIUC 1.5 hours, and WIU and EIU 2 hours

I'm just thinking is that the fact that it's in the state capitol provides UIS some opportunity to grab more students that might be interested in strong political science or public affairs programs yet are heading to out-of-state universities. The "untapped market" consists of the students with academic qualifications that are not high enough for UIUC but much higher than required for ISU/UIC and the directional schools. So, it's not so much that there's an untapped market as it is reclaiming the market share of in-state students. Plus, a strong capitol/college town combo could provide benefits to the economy of the state overall beyond the school - you see this combo in places like Madison and Austin. That's not to say Springfield would ever be in the class of Madison or Austin, but it has some structural advantages that it could leverage better than most other towns of its size. Right now, basically the only Illinois metro areas outside of Chicagoland that aren't suffering from poor or negative economic growth are Champaign-Urbana due to UIUC and Bloomington-Normal due to the combo of ISU and the State Farm world headquarters. Springfield ought to be doing better considering its position as the capitol of one of the largest states population-wise in the country and I think a stronger UIS could contribute a lot to that prospect.

(09-29-2016 11:12 AM)MplsBison Wrote:  Chicago St isn't a HBCU!

I believe it was a teacher's college, started to serve the residents of southern Cook County long ago. Chicago school board took it over, as a lot of the grads went on to become teachers in Chicago. ... and the demographics of that area of town have simply become what they've become. Even decades ago, a considerable number of south Chicago blacks were enrolling at CS to become teachers in CPS.


The interesting history is that the other branches of the Chicago Teachers College are now NEIU.


I can find no possible other reasonable path than to merge Chicago St into NEIU. Leave the campus in south Chicago open, of course. Perhaps make the focus on graduating in two years, with those serious about a four year degree left to "figure it out" on how they'll make it up to NEIU campus a couple times per week. Life is tough, sometimes.




And guess what? NEIU dropped athletics several years ago. No reason Chicago St should not be the same. The worst idea would be to merge with NEIU and then "restart" NEIU athletics on the southside campus.

You're missing the point, I know it's not an HBCU but given it's demographics and mission (even if it isn't its literal mission), it shares much more in common with HBCU's than UI-Urbana Champaign or even Illinois-Chicago.

(09-29-2016 11:54 AM)MU88 Wrote:  

(09-29-2016 06:55 AM)Kittonhead Wrote:  EIU only has 7,000 students.

That to me is an inefficient size for a directional public school.

WIU I see it more since that is more of a geographically distinct region and it has a branch campus of its own.

EIU's enrollment is similar to the enrollments at most of the public universities in the upper midwest. Almost every public university in Wisconsin, outside of Madison and Milwaukee, are around this size. They range from 2500-12000 students give or take. Michigan Tech and Northern Michigan are around the same size. Most of the Minnesota public universities are also in the same range, but for UM, Mankato and St. Cloud. So, EIU's enrollment is not that unusual or small for a public university. The smaller enrollment is somewhat unusual for a D-1 public university. But for UWGB, I don't think any of the other small publics in WI, MN or MI are D-1, but for hockey.

Same for Missouri. EIU is in the D2 range for enrollment among the publics in Missouri. But none of the D2 conferences make sense for EIU. Better to be D1.

Chicago State's basketball arena is beautiful. Would be a shame to see it go to waste.

It already effectively goes to waste if by going to use you mean it being used by the basketball team. I'm sure it will be used for various other reasons as it probably already is. I just hope CSU makes the Dance before they go under, it'd be a great story.

Well the building won't vanish into thin air if CSU drops athletics.

Hopefully high schools can use it for games, perhaps playoffs too.