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Education Desk
The Education Desk is our education blog focusing on key areas of news coverage important to the state and its improvement. Evidence of public policy performance and impact will be reported and analyzed. We encourage you to engage in commenting and discussing the coverage of education from pre-natal to Higher Ed.Dusty Rhodes curates this blog that will provide follow-up to full-length stories, links to other reports of interest, statistics, and conversations with you about the issues and stories.About - Additional Education Coverage00000179-2419-d250-a579-e41d385d0000

Illinois College Enrollment Continues To Drop

Flickr User Brent Hoard/ "ECU School of Education Class Room" (cc by 2.0)

For the past several years, Illinois has been losing more college students than any state except New Jersey. Last year, as higher education was starved by the state budget impasse, that trend continued.

Credit Flickr User Brent Hoard/ "ECU School of Education Class Room" (cc by 2.0)

Overall, undergraduate enrollment decreased by 2 percent, with even steeper drops at public universities and community colleges. 

Schools defying this trend include those focused on medical professions, such as City Colleges of Chicago's Malcolm X campus. Mark Potter, the provost, said its home in the medical district makes it more attractive.

"Being a Center of Excellence means that students are going to come in order to pursue their healthcare interests,” he said. “But it also means that we're able to focus on building partnerships at that location to benefit those students."

Two nursing schools -- Chamberlain College and Resurrection University -- also saw significant increases, as did National Louis University and the University of Illinois' Chicago and Urbana campuses.

Graduate enrollment ticked up, but only by a fraction of a percent overall.​

Copyright 2021 WNIJ Northern Public Radio. To see more, visit WNIJ Northern Public Radio.

After a long career in newspapers (Dallas Observer, The Dallas Morning News, Anchorage Daily News, Illinois Times), Dusty returned to school to get a master's degree in multimedia journalism. She began work as Education Desk reporter at NPR Illinois in September 2014.
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