In Spring 2022, the office of Governor J.B. Pritzker approached the Illinois Workforce and Education Research Collaborative (IWERC) with an idea: Help the state figure out why so many Illinois high schoolers leave the state for college. The most recent data from the Illinois Board of Higher Education (IBHE) showed that nearly one in two students left the state for a four-year college. The question was why.
IWERC, in cooperation with partners at the governor’s office and state agencies, designed a survey to answer that question. In the spring of 2023, a first report of the results was released. It showed that students planning to attend a four-year college were heavily swayed out of state by cost considerations. Since then, IBHE has been reconsidering how Illinois colleges are funded, with tuition burdens currently falling heavily on students.
However, IWERC’s job was not complete. Many high schoolers who were making other plans about college — such as attending a two-year college or not attending at all — had participated in the survey. Additionally, many respondents expressed that the COVID-19 pandemic had changed their decision-making. Seeing these responses, IWERC thought it was important to explore the survey results further.
“We started out with a clear purpose: to understand the reasoning behind students leaving the state for four-year college,” said Mariana Barragan Torres, the research lead on these studies. “But we got more than we bargained for, in a fantastic way. Students with all sorts of post-high school plans shared their viewpoints and experiences, in ways we think are useful to understand for meeting their needs as a state.”
Key findings
The result is three new reports in IWERC’s series on college decision-making, released this week. There are many new findings from these latest reports, including:
- About 20% of high school seniors reported that their college decisions were changed by the pandemic. Some reflected negative changes in circumstances brought on by the pandemic, such as concerns about being admitted due to poor pandemic-era grades or financial strain. Surprisingly, however, students also described finding new purpose during COVID-19 that inspired them towards certain colleges or careers, as well as wanting to be close to family during their college years.
- Students who were not planning to go to college expressed that many supports could have encouraged them to go, such as help with costs, finding options, and applying. These insights suggest there is an opening for policymakers and educators to promote college-going in such students.
- Students planning to attend two-year college had many of the same criteria for decision-making as four-year college-goers, especially an emphasis on cost and location. However, they weighted these factors even more strongly, likely in line with their interest in attending the community college within their district boundary.
“Many of these findings align with our expectations — students make the college decision based on their unique goals,” said Meg Bates, director of IWERC. “However, there are also surprises. The pandemic had interesting and sometimes positive influences on students’ decisions about college, and it appears those students who did not attend college could be nudged to do so, with more support.”
The new reports, along with the first report on four-year college-goers, are available on DPI’s website.
What’s next
IWERC plans to build on these findings in its ongoing work on college-going with the Latino Policy Forum. Together, they are examining the factors that encourage Latino students to enroll and persist in Illinois colleges. One of the key issues the groups are exploring is transfer from community colleges to four-year institutions.
Author: Jeanie Chung