Our college students are leaving Illinois in big numbers

Megan Carmean was one of the 31,477.

In 2016, the Leonore native left home to go away to college in Iowa. That same year, the number of Illinois residents enrolled in an out-of-state four-year institution was 31,477, the Illinois Board of Higher Education reports.

That number was 16,987 students in 2000. Illinois had the second greatest net loss of residents to other states’ colleges in 2016, the board reports.

Carmean, a sophomore, is studying nursing at Luther College in Iowa. She said she enjoys Iowa more than Illinois, and is not sure if she’ll come back after college.

“I like it up here as far as the atmosphere,” she said.

It depends on the job offers she gets after graduation, but she plans on staying around her current area, and she realizes that’s two years away.

When Mike Phillips went to college in the 1980s, it was much cheaper to stay in Illinois, the Illinois Valley Community College instructor said.

Phillips is on the Illinois Board of Higher Education Faculty Advisory Council, so he’s aware of how many students are leaving the state.

Cost is an issue

Addison Lijewski, a 2015 La Salle-Peru Township High School graduate, applied to the University of Missouri on a whim, but she said she ended up falling in love with the college.

And guess what? It was cheaper for her to attend the Missouri college as an out-of-state resident than it was for her to attend the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as an Illinois resident.

Now that she’s a Missouri resident, her tuition, roughly $11,000, is cheaper than any four-year public Illinois college, according to CollegeIllinois.org.

Cost is a huge factor when it comes to these students leaving Illinois, Phillips said.

Students have the perception it’s no more or less expensive to attend an out-of-state college, Phillips said.

“These out-of-state universities have been actively recruiting Illinois students,” he said, referring to programs such as the Midwest Student Exchange Program, which gives students discounts to certain colleges.

St. Bede Academy senior Maggie Daluga was offered academic scholarships that will cut the tuition in half for both the colleges she’s considering: Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta or the University of Pittsburgh, the Princeton resident said.

She said her tuition at either college will be cheaper than it would be at the U. of I.

State problems create issues

Although the two-year budget impasse had immediate and longtime consequences, IVCC worked toward making sure students knew the college supported them. said IVCC President Jerry Corcoran.

When MAP grant funding from the state was uncertain, IVCC was one of a handful of community colleges to cover the costs for students, he said.

It will be a long time before the state can recover, but he said he’s optimistic for the future.

Rumors of colleges closing from the state budget stalemate, may have deterred students from staying in Illinois, Phillips said.

When students are searching for colleges to attend, they’re not going to attend a college they heard might possibly close, he said.

What problems come from them leaving?

There’s no data to support this, but Phillips said he worries that if a student is already thinking about going to Iowa instead of Illinois State University, the student probably wonders, ‘why should I go to IVCC?’

IVCC’s credits transfer just fine out of state, he said.

Many of the students who leave to get their four-year degree outside the state don’t come back, he said.

JP Perona, a 2012 St. Bede graduate from La Salle, said he recently was offered a job in Chicago, but he doesn’t see himself returning to live in the Illinois Valley. Perona attended the University of San Diego in California.

If we want our economy to grow, we’ve got to grow colleges because these institutions provide an economic base, Phillips said.

There’s a correlation between colleges losing financial support and seeing students leave the state, and keeping students in Illinois is an investment in the state’s future, he said.

When asked if this vast number of students leaving will have an effect on the local economy, La Salle-Peru Township High School superintendent Steven Wrobleski said this could affect our ability to find a qualified workforce, and he also mentioned “brain drain,” which is when educated or highly trained people leave particular areas.

Are there ways to combat the issue?

The council Phillips is on talks about fixing the problem, but the issue comes down to getting college funding back from the state, he said.

Many local students who left Illinois said their major or specific program they entered into was a deciding factor. Does state funding have anything do with this?

“As funding has been cut, universities have had to cut back on programs. Generally, they cut the size of programs,” Phillips said.

When programs get smaller, they are less able to market themselves and can have less appeal to students, which is difficult to change if funding stays low, he said.

“It results in the impression that programs do not exist, when, in many cases, they are just very small,” he said.

High schools look out for students

“Whatever is best for them, that’s what we want,” said St. Bede guidance director Theresa Bernabei.

The school looks out for what is best academically and financially for students.

“Our role in preparing and planning for college is to help students find what they consider to be the best fit for them academically, socially, emotionally, etc.” said Andy Berlinski, principal at Princeton High School.

Ali Braboy can be reached at (815) 220-6931 and countyreporter@newstrib.com. Follow her on Twitter @NT_PutnamCo.