(03-22-2020 04:55 PM)Huckin Fuskie Wrote: Georgia told its colleges and universities, "Our model is to have only two elite public universities, UGA and GA Tech. All other public colleges and universities will be second- and third-tier schools for people who can't get into those two or who want to stay local. We don't want to water down those two universities and scramble to fund several others that want to grow to that level."
So, the state has its two elite universities and then a variety of very good second- and third-tier support schools, along with private schools. I wonder if that will become a model for more states in the future.
That's all fine and dandy, but Georgia State has an undergrad enrollment of 44k, Kennesaw State has 35k, and Georgia Southern has 23k undergrads. And 2 of those schools have FBS football programs (and, there's a decent chance KSU will have one in the near future).
Any of the "2nd tier" Illinois schools would kill for those enrollments.
With that said, I don't think some thinning of the herd would be the worst in regards to Illinois public universities. The two right off the top would be Chicago State (I believe it has it's purpose, but it people simply aren't going, what's the point?) and WIU. Next tier would be EIU and SIU.
SIUe makes more sense to keep open and promote because of it being located within a pretty dense population area. If given the choice (being interested in that kind of school, ie, decent size, public, etc), kids in that area are going to choose a St. Louis school that may not exactly fit their criteria exactly over SIU in Carbondale. Now, there is a lot of kids in the southern part of the state that would start going to schools like either Southeastern Missouri or Murray State or schools in Paducah or Evansville.
However, with an undergrad enrollment of only <9k, at some point, you have to consider if its that much of a draw (especially considering that a decent amount of students who go to SIU are from Chicago.