Over the last two decades, Eastern has lost nearly half the number of students once enrolled as part of a statewide trend in public universities across Illinois.
Since the 2004-05 school year, Eastern’s enrollment including off campus students has dropped from 11,651 to 5,910, a drop of around 49% over the last 20 years.
Eastern’s struggles to attract and retain students mirror similar enrollment declines at other directional schools in the state.
Over the last 20 years, enrollment is down 38% at Northern Illinois University, 45% at Southern Illinois University Carbondale and 53% at Western Illinois University.
Over the same period, enrollment at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville dropped by 12% while the number of students at Illinois State University increased slightly by around 4%.
There are, however, two state schools that have bucked this trend: the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the University of Illinois Chicago.
At UIUC, enrollment has exploded to a record high of 59,238, an increase of 46% over the last two decades, and at UIC, enrollment now tops 18,500 students, a 33% increase over the last 20 years.
One contributor to UIUC’s success is the level of funding it receives compared to other schools in the state. The adequacy funding for U of I, or the percentage of funds it has received to meet its educational needs, is 92%, according to a report by the Illinois Commission on Equitable Public University Funding.
That makes the state’s largest university also its best funded.
Last year, Eastern hit 61% of its target funding. Of the $178,159,100 budget this year, 53% was allocated from the state.
The funding disparities in the state create two classes of universities in Illinois: “the have and the have nots,” said John Blue, the inaugural executive director and senior diversity and inclusion officer at Eastern.
A bitter state budget standoff nearly a decade ago, the COVID-19 pandemic and a decline in enrollment prior to both of those events all have contributed to Eastern’s enrollment getting cut in half.
But Eastern hasn’t always been shrinking.
Jeffrey Stowell, professor of psychology and vice chair of faculty senate, has been teaching at Eastern since 2000 and remembers when his classes reached capacity consistently.
When Stowell first started working at Eastern, he said there were so many students in the psychology department that he and other professors discussed how to keep them from becoming psychology majors just to have enough space.
“We couldn’t handle them all,” Stowell said. “Our classrooms were full. I would have students asking to [join the classes], and I’m like, ‘I just simply can’t do it, because there’s no physical room in the classroom.’”
Now, Stowell said his psychology classes can hold 55 students, but only about 30 sign up.
The beginning of EIU’s enrollment decline
From 2006 to 2016, Eastern’s enrollment was already on a steady decline, losing nearly 5,000 students during the decade.
This became visible on campus when the university decided to close Carman Hall, the largest dorm complex on campus that was exclusively home to freshmen. Carman has two eight-floor towers that were closed in 2013 and now is used for fire department training.
According to a documentary on Carman Hall, Mark Hudson, the executive director of housing and dining services, said the building was shut down because it was “less than needed for demand.”
“We opted to close it down in order to fit the main people on the core of campus so we can focus on resources on renovations and things in that area in order to save operating money as well as future investment opportunities,” Hudson said in the documentary.
From July 1, 2015, to August 31, 2017, then Gov. Bruce Rauner (Rep.) had a budget standoff with the Democrat-controlled state legislature. As a result, Illinois did not have a complete budget, which impacted state funding in several areas, such as social service programs, state agency operations and higher education.
During this time, Eastern experienced a decrease of 3,181 students.
Brittany Tierney, Eastern’s director of admissions, said the drop in enrollment numbers in 2017 was directly connected to the budget crisis in the state.
“There was no state budget for a time frame that impacted universities,” Tierney said. “That impacted all state entities whenever there is no state budget.”
Jose Garcia, director of strategic communications at the Illinois Board of Higher Education, said enrollment at Eastern and other Illinois public universities has also been affected by COVID-19 pandemic. Eastern’s enrollment numbers from 2019 to 2023 were consistent, with 6,226 students in 2019 and 6,353 in 2023.
In the spring of 2023, university professors went on strike for six days. Tierney said Eastern was projected to have a good year with their enrollment numbers, but she said the EIU-UPI strike interrupted the projection.
“We lost a lot of students through that process,” Tierney said.
Eastern’s enrollment has dropped from 6,357 in 2023 to 5,910 last fall.
Jennifer Stringfellow disagrees with Tierney’s statement. Stringfellow was the president of EIU University Professionals of Illinois during the strike, the labor union that represents the 450 workers who went on strike.
“I don’t really buy that,” Stringfellow said. “I mean I’m not saying that there’s no impact, but I don’t believe that people aren’t coming here because they’re concerned that we might go on strike again, or that we went on strike and they didn’t like the strike.”
During 2024, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid experienced several delays and errors which interrupted the college enrollment for millions of families across the nation. Students who attend smaller state schools, such as Eastern, are more likely to seek out financial aid.
“We were down quite a bit in terms of students that had committed to come to Eastern, like 30% at one point,” Tierney said. “We ended up being down, in terms of first year incoming students, 4%.”
Trying to hit funding targets
Eastern is still trying to catch up from the funding it lost 10 years ago in the state budget fight, said Blue.
“That’s what led to the impasse, was the governor not budgeting, taking so much money out of the budget for state institutions,” Blue said. “It’s important that the state actually supports, financially supports the institutions.”
Each year, the Illinois Board of Higher Education calculates the cost for each state school to provide an equitable education based on each university’s needs and programs. That number is referred to as the education “adequacy target.”
The other 12 state schools averaged about 55% of the funding they need to reach their funding target.
Some universities rely more on state funding to reach their target than others. Smaller schools like Eastern are more reliant on the state than the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign because they don’t receive as much money from other sources.
Overall, the state estimates the funding target for all public universities at $4.47 billion, but those schools receive just $3 billion, according to the 2024 report. Medical schools were not included in state funding figures.
Relying solely on state funding would put EIU at just under 30% funded. Only relying on the state would alter the way students are taught, Blue said. To prevent this, Blue said he seeks out grants from sponsors and donors.
“It would affect the type of education we can offer, which in turn affects the type of graduates we can pump into the Illinois economy, which also affects the economy as a whole because if you don’t have people that are properly trained at a certain field, now you are lacking in that field,” Blue said. “It’s a whole trickle down effect.”
To improve enrollment numbers and funding, Gov. J.B. Pritzker is working to remove barriers and even out what schools receive from the state, said Garcia, the board of higher education spokesperson.
Government funding, including federal student aid, can play a major role in the way a university is run. It also can affect enrollment. Last year, Pritzker signed a $2.6 billion higher education budget, an increase of nearly $76 million from the previous fiscal year, or 3%.
For the 2025 fiscal year, Eastern has a total budget of $178,159,100 in total spending money for the current fiscal year which was a 3.1% increase from the previous fiscal year, of which nearly $8 million comes from the state.
Rebuilding enrollment at Eastern
One of the ways that Eastern is attempting to improve enrollment is by offering grants to its students.
Along with other state schools, Eastern can offer state AIM HIGH Grants, which covers an Illinois student’s entire tuition if they are eligible. If students receive it once and continue to maintain eligibility, they will receive a renewal grant, which covers the full cost of tuition and fees for students taking 15 credit hours.
Eastern also offers the EIU Promise grant to first time undergraduate students. The grant covers a student’s tuition and fees, if the gross household income is $80,000 or below annually and if other requirements are met.
Leaders at Eastern have tried to increase enrollment by emphasizing how affordable it is. The average cost of tuition at Eastern is around $12,000.
Shortly after the start of the pandemic, Eastern removed its application fee, and the university expects to keep it like that permanently, said Tierney.
Illinois is one of the country’s top exporters of high school students to go to college in others states, taking away potential enrollment from state schools, said Stowell.
Stowell said he thinks the university has shifted its focus on what it is and the types of programs that it can and should be offering, while being both nimble and flexible in the process.
“I think the budget impasse and the pandemic, some as well, I think it really had a refining effect on how we work as an institution and who wants to be here at the institution,” he said.
Eastern also is pushing to attract international students, contacting 50,000 high schools worldwide, said Andy Kabasele, Eastern’s assistant dean for international students and scholars.
“We have seen some years where numbers have gone really up, and then some years have gone down and that depends on administration,” Kabasele said.
In 2023, Kabasele said the international enrollment soared from 253 students to 880, which was a 350% increase. That success has taken a turn since President Donald Trump took office, and his administration began making it harder to get visas.
This semester, around 240 international students had their visas denied, the News previously reported. Last fall, 196 visas were denied, and recently, 11 students had their visas revoked. University leaders said the drop in international students is the main reason on-campus enrollment is down nearly 10% this semester.
International students pay the full tuition rate because they come from out of the country.
Eastern hired Kabasele to help assist international students and provide services to retain them. Kabasele said he works with the Department of Homeland Security to make sure that the appropriate services are being provided as well as making sure students are in compliance with their visas. The country with the highest number of international students attending Eastern is India.
Kabasele said they receive around 8,000 applications, but a lot of them are not accepted because of visa holdups. Even before Trump took office, Kabasele said students told him that getting appointments regarding their visas had been challenging, because the office was backlogged from the pandemic.
Cam’ron Hardy can be reached at 581-2812 or at cahardy@eiu.edu.
