While I strongly disagree with the reasoning behind your Jan. 20 editorial, ”Let the Northern expansion proceed,” this letter is not intended to debate your position. I do, however, want to point out two factual mistakes in your editorial and those of a number of other newspapers.
You say Northern Illinois University has 3,000 students in the northwest suburbs. That`s wrong. NIU had nearly 3,000 course enrollments during the 1989-90 academic year. Based on an average of four courses a typical part-time student takes each year, NIU`s course enrollments translate into only about 750 students. We were credited with 10,174 individual course enrollments;
however, the number of individual students attending our Arlington Heights campus in the same year was only roughly 2,900.
Thus, NIU`s state subsidy will make its proposed branch campus an expensive proposition for the taxpayers of Illinois. In our estimation, NIU is going to spend over $10 million to build, equip, staff and operate a branch campus serving 750 students. That`s over $13,000 per student.
When you say ”competition in higher education is desirable,” we agree;
but where`s the fair competition? While the costs of offering most academic programs are roughly the same in the private and public sector, the price charged to the student is quite different. A Roosevelt University
undergraduate pays 85 percent of the cost of his education. A student from NIU pays less than 43 percent.
