A new Illinois law will allow high school seniors to receive direct admission offers from public colleges and universities without submitting applications.
This is expected to reshape the college admissions process and increase pressure on private institutions like Columbia College to compete.
Following his promise to make higher education accessible to every student, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed a series of bills earlier this summer to help “streamline the application process” for high school seniors. One of these bills was the “Public University Direct Admission Program Act,” which is set to make post-secondary education more accessible by saving collegebound students both time and money.
Starting in 2027, Illinois students who choose to opt into the program will have their contact and academic information shared with a majority of state universities and community colleges. They will then be able to send direct offers to students that are qualified for admission.
Not only does this law directly support public colleges and universities, but it also forces private institutions to adapt to a changing admissions landscape, said Illinois Sen. Christopher Belt, who co-sponsored the bill.
Belt, senator for the 57th district in the Metro East region, said that private colleges are becoming “more competitive” and “more creative in the way they recruit.”
Emmanual Lalande, the college’s newly appointed senior vice president of enrollment strategy and student success, told the Chronicle that the new law creates an opportunity to “begin our conversations earlier in the pipeline.”
For Columbia, this would mean increased marketing to high school sophomore students who are just beginning their post-secondary search process. This is so “they have a great idea of what Columbia College is, and for us to really double down on what we bring,” Lalande said.
Enrollment at Columbia has dropped significantly in recent years from 6,769 in Fall 2020 before the pandemic to 4,952 in Spring 2025.
Between 2010 and 2021, enrollment nationwide dropped 15 percent, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, driven in part by a decline in birth rates and the college-age population. Idaho, the first state to adopt a direct admissions program, has increased its undergraduate enrollment by 11 percent since 2015.
As of Fall 2023, 66 percent of first-year students at Columbia returned for their second year. The national average that year was 69 percent. Data for the last academic year will not be available until October, said Greg Foster-Rice, associate provost for student success initiatives.
This spring the college reported that the percentage of first years who returned in the spring was down 1.5%, but the college kept more transfer students, with a 3% increase.
“We are fairly close to recent national averages of retention,” Foster-Rice said. He added that the college is working to improve those numbers.
The college has faced unique challenges regarding its declining enrollment, including the lasting effects of the historic part-time faculty strike in 2023, the consolidation or elimination of nearly half of all programs and staff and full-time faculty layoffs in the last year.
The new law, Lalande said, will give Columbia a chance to “hone in on who we are.”
This story has been corrected.
Copy edited by Brandon Anaya
