In an effort to combat low enrollment, Southern Illinois University-Carbondale announced on Jan. 12, it will let students from Missouri, Indiana and Kentucky pay the same tuition rates as in-state students.

Vice Provost Earl Seaver said he wasn’t sure if NIU would adopt a similar program. Seaver, however, said any university that offers a program like this must be careful.

“As universities try to attract out-of-state students, you don’t want to take out-of-state students and not have enough room for in-state students,” Seaver said. “Sometimes those universities have been criticized because in-state students can’t get a seat.”

The Associated Press reported Jan. 12 that SIU’s enrollment numbers have been declining for 20 years, with a top administrator being fired for that reason in 2006, and that the discount is the latest “in a bidding war” over prospective students.

Admissions director Bob Burk agrees that a bidding war has started amongst universities nationwide. One of the reasons, he said, is fewer seniors will graduate high school after 2010.

“It was a fact of life that this was going to happen,” Burk said.

Burk said there are advantages to equalizing in-state and out-of-state tuition rates. SIU-Carbondale is within 100 miles of St. Louis and Evansville, Ind., cities that boast populations of 100,000 and more.

In addition, because of their distance from home, out-of-state students would also live in the residence halls.

There are drawbacks however. Universities like SIU-Carbondale will not get state support for the out-of-state students.

Seaver said that in-state students get lower tuition rates because their parents are paying taxes which fund higher education.

“Someone from another state pays more tuition to make up for that subsidy,” Seaver said.

The university would have to make up the difference the state would have covered.

Offering discounted rates will not solve any university’s enrollment problems, Burk added, nor is it guaranteed to work.

“Just because SIU is offering that doesn’t mean they’ll get thousands of other students,” Burk said. “There could even be a possible backlash.”

Sophomore biology major Hilary Coulombe said it would make sense to offer in-state tuition rates to students from neighboring states.

“Maybe you could work out a deal between schools, like between Illinois and Wisconsin,” Coulombe said.