URBANA, Ill. – A state senator from Chicago says the University of Illinois might consider placing caps on numbers of international students it accepts.

Ed Maloney broached the possibility after one institute found Illinois’ 41,000-student Urbana-Champaign campus has more than 5,000 foreign students.

That’s more than any other public U.S. university.

The Democrat – who chairs the Senate’s Higher Education Committee – cites projections that Illinois high schools will graduate more students in coming years.

He says that means many qualified Illinoisans may not have a shot at getting into UI.

But an associate provost at the Urbana-Champaign campus cites the welcome diversity foreign students bring to UI and says it’d be wrong to impose caps.