I hear you re: comparisons to Michigan, but I am not really comparing directly to Michigan, just using it to illustrate what the ultimate goal vis-s-vis in-state students’ perception of their state flagship should be. There are 24 schools ranked ahead of Michigan (USNWR just to pick one list) with smaller, and in some case much smaller, endowments. So while a gigantic endowment would be very helpful in trying to buy status, it is by no means a necessary prerequisite to improving status.
The point is that UIUC should be a top choice school for more top level Illinois high school grads, and one way to define top choice is ‘a school worth waiting for if you are deferred’ (it doesn’t have to be a first choice over Harvard/MIT). In this regard they have several advantages over Michigan (the state, not the school).
First, there are many more high school grads coming out of Illinois than Michigan, something like 40k per year. This is a huge pool of potential students. While the average test scores are lower in Illinois, these schools don’t draw from the average, and the right tail has a lot more students in Illinois than in Michigan from a notional standpoint.
Second, there is an absolute embarrassment of riches in Illinois re: high quality high schools. Check out this list…
https://k12.niche.com/rankings/public-high-schools/best-overall/
Holy cow, there are 9 Illinois schools in the top 30 and 16 in the top 100 with only 1 from Michigan!
Now maybe this list is biased somehow, I don’t know, I just saw it referenced on Business Insider. But even if it is biased, wow, that is a stunning advantage in high quality high schools.
Lastly, Illinois OOS tuition is much lower than that of Michigan. While not really an advantage “over” Michigan, it is important to note that it will not cost Illinois very much to offer in-state tuition as a merit deal to entice top level OOS applicants to attend.
All in all, when you go over the numbers, it is kinda shocking that UIUC gets lumped in with so many other Midwest flagships as far as status goes. They have so much more to work with and should be a top five in the nation public school. New York is kinda in the same position, with no real top level flagship and lots of exported top students. This question is, does UIUC care and is there anything they can do about it?
I think they don’t care and mostly ignore things they should be doing something about. Wow, look at that article from IHE where they basically admit they were incompetent in recruiting OOS students and had to race to China to get non-resident money in the door. How is this anything but extremely embarrassing?