Brain drain: Out-of-state colleges key on recruiting students from Illinois

The Daily Chronicle reports:

Two years of a budget impasse in Springfield that included cuts to state universities made the state’s graduating high school seniors a tempting target for out-of-state universities.

In that time, Northern Illinois University saw a decline in undergrad enrollment of 5 percent, and most state universities have suffered similar or greater declines in enrollment. At the same time, a network of recruiters in Chicago works to recruit Illinois’ best and brightest to other schools.

Tiffany Dallas, a Colorado State University admissions recruiter based in DeKalb, said a lot of the students she recruits from Illinois – specifically the area around Chicago – leave because it’s Colorado, although the uncertainty in state higher education plays a factor.

“Colorado is absolutely amazing and blows the state of Illinois out of the water,” Dallas said. “But the next step is the students don’t feel like their education is necessarily stable here. They’re just sick of hearing, ‘Yeah, there’s no budget; we don’t know if we have money; we have to cut programs.’ ”

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