13% at U of I are foreign

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has more than 5,000 international students, more than any other public university in the United States, according to the Institute of International Education. University officials said the students add diversity to the campus, but some critics accuse the university of using international students and the higher tuition they pay to shore up the school's finances. The students come from 120 countries and make up about 13 percent of the 41,000 students on the university's flagship campus. Ten years ago, only about 9 percent of the students at Urbana-Champaign campus came from foreign countries.