Tomorrow, many a prospective student will log on to the their application to the University and discover with either delight or dismay their admission status. But applicants to the Institute of Aviation, which University officials recently proposed to shut down, may be surprised to find they have been accepted into the Division of General Studies rather than their college of choice.

“What we’ll do this year is admit qualified students into the Division of General Studies with a message that says they would be able to transfer into the Institute of Aviation should the programs go forward,” said Richard Wheeler, Interim Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs. “We don’t believe that it would be fair to the students to admit them into an institute for which a recommendation for closing has been made.”

On Sept. 28, Chancellor and Interim Provost Robert Easter and Wheeler submitted the recommendation that the academic program at the institute be closed, saving the University between $500,000 and $750,000 per year. Feb. 8, the two submitted the proposal that the institute be closed altogether, though the proposal must be approved by the Urbana-Champaign Senate after a March 8 public hearing at 3:30 p.m. in 100 Noyes Laboratory.

“We think it’s premature given that the meeting isn’t until March 8,” said Tom Emanuel, director of academic affairs at the Institute of Aviation, on admitting potential Aviation students into DGS.

Declining applications and enrollment played a role in the proposal to phase out Aviation. The Institute received 78 applications in 2004, which dropped to 30 for Fall 2009. However, the number rose to 49 in 2010.

Interest in aviation in general may be on the rise, Emanuel said, given that the Federal Aviation Agency estimates that between 2012 and 2017, 50 percent of current pilots will hit age 65 and have to retire.

Last summer, the faculty that made up the Human Factors degree program — the academic aviation program — were transferred to other departments on campus.

“There was a real desire not to put (Human Factors) faculty in a position of watching the institute close out from under them,” Wheeler said. “It seemed to be the most humane thing to do, to find good places for them on campus prior to our recommendation.”

However some, such as Dana Dann-Messier, president of the institute’s alumni board, have called Aviation’s predicament without tenured faculty a “catch-22.”

“By removing the faculty, the administration used it as a key point for the discontinuation of academic degrees,” Dann-Messier said in a letter to Aviation alumni. “All the while not acknowledging the catch-22 situation they created.”

Unlike the process at other colleges at the University, the Institute of Aviation no longer reviews its own applications, and the Office of Admissions and Public Affairs have not released the number of applicants for Aviation. Nevertheless, Cole Goldenberg, student senator from Aviation, said Admission officials have said a number of Aviation applicants have ACT scores and GPAs above the campus average and “are very well qualified to attend Aviation.”

“There’s a lot of people who need to make a decision now,” Goldenberg said. “(The applicants) paid for that application, and we need to honor that.”