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The Lincoln Hall Project « College of Liberal Arts & Sciences « University of Illinois


Lincoln Hall Project


Education’s New Dawn

Students of ‘All Classes’

Class of men and women

Tuition in 1911 was just $24 per year, or roughly $525 by today’s standards, which made the U of I widely accessible, although at this time many people still decided that they needed their college-aged children working instead of going to school (students spent $350 to $450 per year in living and enrollment expenses). Administrators took pride in saying they educated students of “all classes,” and indeed, a campus historian says students were primarily middle class. According to data from 1912 to 1913, about a quarter of students came from farms; others came from parents in mercantile and manufacturing (22 percent), professionals (12 percent), finance and business management (12 percent), and skilled and unskilled laborers (9 percent). Alumni records indicate that roughly two or three dozen African American students were on campus during Lincoln Hall’s construction. Data is not clear on other minorities, although historians say U of I students in 1911 were primarily white and Protestant.

Group of Chinese men

Faces from Chicago to China

Of 3,281 students who enrolled in 1911, some 656 were women. Roughly three-quarters of students came from Illinois, with a majority coming from the northern half of the state. More students came from Chicago than any other city, but students hailed from every corner of Illinois, including a bevy of tiny farm towns such as Oblong, Indianola, and Holder. Foreign students composed a small percentage of total enrollments, with many of them Chinese (57 in 1911) who took advantage of the Boxer Rebellion Indemnity Program, in which the United States offered college scholarships to China to settle a debt. Other students came from Europe, India, Mexico, Cuba, Japan, Paraguay, the Philippines, and elsewhere. Students in 1911 included Mark Van Doren, future Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and critic, and the son of Indian poet, playwright, novelist, and musician Rabindranath Tagore, who lived on campus for a few months and was later the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in literature.