Public colleges and universities account for almost 75 percent of all undergraduate students in the U.S. The best public colleges in Illinois provide broad access to reputable degree programs, affordable tuition, and sprawling educational communities.
Illinois offers over 130 higher education institutes throughout the state. More than half of those schools are private, including the well-known DePaul University, Northwestern University, and Loyola University Chicago. While tuition at these three private schools can be costly, ranging from $44,000 to $55,000, graduation rates are high. Tuition at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Illinois at Chicago, the state’s two largest public universities, falls in the range of $13,000 to $15,000.
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While some of these universities have large student populations, Illinois is also home to many small schools, including Benedictine University and National Louis University. Students choosing to study at one at an Illinois college can pursue degrees in areas like criminal justice, social work, nursing, education, religious studies, communications, and medicine. Additionally, Illinois offers several loan forgiveness program for qualifying students pursuing careers as teachers, public defenders or prosecutors, or nurses.
From the skyscrapers in Chicago to the vast prairie lands in the north, Illinois is a place where city meets country. Students can grab a Chicago-style hotdog on the way to a Cubs game, explore the ancient sandstone cliffs in the Shawnee National Forest, or admire an exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago, all while attending one of The Prairie State’s universities or colleges.
The higher education institutes in Illinois have also produced many prominent alumni, including Stephen Colbert, Hugh Hefner, and Kurt Vonnegut. Students hoping to walk the same streets as these well-known individuals can check out some of the state’s top programs and universities.
Public and private colleges and universities operate under different business models. Public colleges and universities are owned by the state and receive both state and federal funding to operate. Private colleges and universities are private companies with private funding. If you’re looking at the pros and cons of private vs. public colleges, consider that many public colleges provide diverse course offerings, influential professors, and an excellent return on your investment.
Public colleges are schools that receive most of their funding from tax revenues. As a result, the cost of a bachelor’s degree at a public university is often lower than the equivalent cost at a private college — especially for students attending a public school in their home state. Attending a college in-state is usually the cheapest option. Private universities and colleges can be very competitive with their funding opportunities, so do not simply believe that private colleges are always going to be more expensive. According to National Center for Educational Statistics, the average annual cost (tuition, fees, room and board for full-time students) at a public university was slightly over $20,000. In contrast, private universities cost, on average, nearly $43,000 annually. But in the end, the cost of college comes down to each student’s academic and financial situation.
This list is composed entirely of public colleges and universities that offer bachelor’s degrees. We’ve identified 12 public universities in Illinois. To be included in our list of the best public colleges in Illinois, shcools must receive direct funding from the state, be fully accredited, and offer a broad range of bachelor’s degress.
The people affiliated with a school are ultimately what make it great! If you are serious about finding the best colleges and universities for a bachelor’s degree, you should be asking where the most influential professors are teaching and whether their graduates are themselves advancing the school’s reputation for academic excellence in their fields of study.
Most ranking sites rely on an opaque combination of reputation surveys and arbitrary performance metrics. Concentrated Influence provides a ranking that is freer from bias, insulated from manipulation, and reflective of real-world educational outcomes.
To rank the influence of schools, we first determine the influence of scholars and professionals based on the number of citations and publications they have had over the past 10 years. In addition to publications and citations, we consider the web links to and from these sources, and the page views of those sources. We then match the influential people to their alma maters and institutions of employment, so that their influence is attributed to those schools. Our machine-learning Influence Ranking algorithm produces a numerical score of academic achievements, merits, and citations across Wikipedia, wikidata, Crossref, Semantic Scholar and an ever-growing body of data. If you are interested in exploring how and why we rank by influence, explore our methodology in more depth.
Tuition + fees
$17K
Acceptance
63%
Graduation
86%
Student body
54K
Median SAT/ACT
1340/29
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$15K
Acceptance
73%
Graduation
63%
Student body
28K
Median SAT/ACT
1145/24
University of Illinois Chicago’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$12K
Acceptance
59%
Graduation
48%
Student body
14K
Median SAT/ACT
1055/22
Northern Illinois University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$13K
Acceptance
81%
Graduation
68%
Student body
19K
Median SAT/ACT
1120/23
Illinois State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$15K
Acceptance
92%
Graduation
48%
Student body
10K
Median SAT/ACT
1140/24
Southern Illinois University Carbondale’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$12K
Acceptance
85%
Graduation
54%
Student body
11K
Median SAT/ACT
1120/23
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$14K
Acceptance
67%
Graduation
46%
Student body
7K
Median SAT/ACT
1050/21
Western Illinois University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$12K
Acceptance
77%
Graduation
55%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
1107/22
University of Illinois Springfield’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$12K
Acceptance
56%
Graduation
51%
Student body
6K
Median SAT/ACT
1035/20
Eastern Illinois University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$11K
Acceptance
46%
Graduation
16%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
951/17
Chicago State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$10K
Acceptance
48%
Graduation
24%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
935/19
Governors State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$12K
Acceptance
61%
Graduation
23%
Student body
5K
Median SAT/ACT
1015/18
Northeastern Illinois University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Many of our 2022 undergraduate focused rankings look considerably different than 2021. That’s because we took a fundamentally different apporach. For 2021 we utiulized our Concentrated Influence algorithm, designed to take away the size advantage larger schools have when we rank their faculty and alumni’s academic influence. Concentrated influence highlights smaller schools that are proportionally as successful as larger universities at cultivating influential alumni and faculty.