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I'm looking at my fall enrollment numbers. All my classes have some students enrolled, which is actually pretty good for mid-April. Seems like online classes may be enrolling faster than f2f ones.

My lowest enrollment is for a class that runs on Friday afternoon, and that's probably the reason it is low.

How about you?

Heh. We haven't even opened up registration for the Fall term. Heck, we're still deciding if we're even going to follow the planned Fall academic calendar or not.

Quote from: Aster on April 15, 2020, 02:46:27 PM
Heh. We haven't even opened up registration for the Fall term. Heck, we're still deciding if we're even going to follow the planned Fall academic calendar or not.

I'll do you one better. We have opened up registration, without deciding if we're going to follow the Fall calendar. I really, really, really hope that our Registrar does not leave us; she is amazing, and we would be toast.

I dont know that any numbers that are out Now have a lot of meaning.  IF we are still 'social distancing', then will some students or parents have jobs to support tuition?  IF we are still in a 'recession' then usually that is good for tuition dollars as more people come back to get a degree or finish up (because the opportunity costs are lower). 

Anyway, I doubt that any enrollment numbers are dependable.  I doubt that anything close to accurate will be available before June or July. 

Current undergrads here have, for the most part, registered for fall courses. Enrollment in one of my courses is normal but in the other it's low. I've heard from other faculty that they are seeing below-normal enrollments in some courses, but I think it's probably because students are not in their usual routines on campus, not because they plan on not returning in the fall.

The big worry here is the size of this year's freshman class. Deposits are running 10-15% below normal. The official deadline has been pushed forward 30 days to June 1, but that's leading to even more uncertainty. I predict there's going to be a scramble over the summer to fill seats and we will be admitting students we wouldn't have admitted five years ago, which will contribute to the university's downward spiral. They will be getting a lot of financial aid but retention will be lousy, in effect the university will be over-subsidizing their presence on campus. 

Fall enrollment numbers are lower than usual at this stage, with plans for advisors to reach out students individually. Freshman enrollment usually happens during summer orientations, some of which may be online. I've heard deposits are low, but no firm numbers yet.

We are backup plan for many students waitlisted for Nearby U. We could not just lose enrollment, but lose the top of our freshman class if Nearby U admits waitlisted students because their deposits are below expectations. Here's hoping that Nearby U is ahead of schedule on deposits this year.

We haven't heard a peep about fall enrollments. What I can tell you is that summer enrollment is currently sky-high, and that the admin is worried about winter enrollments, because we're dependent on international recruitment from India and that's when most of those students arrive.

I teach at the junior level and enrollment is about like I expect.

Quote from: dr_codex on April 15, 2020, 04:28:00 PM

Quote from: Aster on April 15, 2020, 02:46:27 PM
Heh. We haven't even opened up registration for the Fall term. Heck, we're still deciding if we're even going to follow the planned Fall academic calendar or not.

I'll do you one better. We have opened up registration, without deciding if we're going to follow the Fall calendar. I really, really, really hope that our Registrar does not leave us; she is amazing, and we would be toast.

Same with my place, but that seems like the only real way to go. If students register for in person classes, you can move those online and everyone will still be able to take them. It wouldn't work the other way. My numbers look about like they usually do at this point. Of course, it isn't like preregistering comes with a cost or obligation, so I'm not sure how much that can tell us.

Quote from: Parasaurolophus on April 16, 2020, 10:24:22 AM
We haven't heard a peep about fall enrollments. What I can tell you is that summer enrollment is currently sky-high, and that the admin is worried about winter enrollments, because we're dependent on international recruitment from India and that's when most of those students arrive.

Latest dispatch from here suggests a similar situation:

Summer enrollment is running above-average at the moment (within the college, though not necessarily the whole university).  The deadline for admitted undergrad students to accept has been pushed back somewhat, so yield of matriculating students for fall is unclear.

A lot of the grad students are international (especially from China and S. Asia) and may be deterred by visa/travel issues.   At the department level, new grad student matriculation is currently running about average, with a deadline for first-round admits at the end of the week.

College is floating the idea of making it easier for new students to begin remotely and then come to campus if/when the campus is open and students are free to travel.  How this will be accomplished is thus far unclear.

I should add Summer enrollments. I picked up a summer class online, which is full.

Summer classes here are all online.  In my department, most are already full and waitlisted. 
We have not yet opened Fall registration or even decided if/when campus will be open again.  The county Health Inspector has said all schools & universities have to remain closed until the end of June.  No idea what will happen as far as summer research, let alone Fall classes.

We just got our update. New undergraduate deposits down 8% from this point last year. Incoming transfers up, and probably going to be way up. Grad students too early to call. Lots of current students not yet registered -- I'd guess that there are lots of holds on accounts, for finances and for housing issues.

If this holds up, it will actually balance out our cohorts somewhat, and help to fix a hole caused by higher than usual withdrawals two years ago.

Our most recent update showed new student enrollment only a little below last year. There's still a lot of uncertainty and a lot of data not yet in. There's a chance total undergrad credit hours could be up by the start of the semester.

I'm at a community college and on a quarter system.  Enrollment for summer and fall doesn't begin for another couple of weeks, so it's all wild speculation at this point. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out.

It wouldn't surprise me if we see a drop in enrollment for summer.  For fall, I could envision enrollment being flat or maybe even a bit elevated.  With the recession, there's not as much of an opportunity cost in going back to school, as someone mentioned upthread.  And community colleges are built for that.  I could also see 'traditional age' students looking towards community college.  Why pay more to go the four-year when you'd have to stay at home and take your classes online anyways?

Summer enrollment is higher than usual, especially first session which is online. Fall enrollment and virtual new student orientation sessions are about 8% lower than normal at this point, according to update released this week. University has been told that a 5% reduction in state aid for FY21 is likely. Deans and directors are contingency planning for 10% and 20% budget reductions.

University is marketing degree completion program heavily. Target group is 20-30 age range with 5-6 semesters completed.

I'm at a small non-selective regionally focused LAC.  Our incoming first year class is down 35% from this time last year.

My single Fall 2020 online class has a lot more students enrolled than usual at this time. My face to face class for this Fall, has a little bit lower enrollment than in previous years, at this time. I'm teaching a summer class, which has been converted to online (I wasn't given the choice of delivery format, but I'm not arguing the conversion to online). I don't usually teach in the summers, so I don't know if my numbers are higher or lower than usual, but the class is 7 students away from the cap, so it's not going to be an easy class to teach.

Quote from: no1capybara on May 02, 2020, 02:45:59 PM
Our incoming first year class is down 35% from this time last year.

Here's a hypothesis someone should test. Colleges that are politically correct enough to say "first-year" will have worse fall enrollment  than colleges that still say "freshman," because the students at the former are wealthy and white enough to take (or to have heard of) "gap years."

Meanwhile, the "freshmen" at my poor benighted college have no choice but to show up in the fall, having never heard that taking a year off is an option.

I believe that it is highly premature to look at current Fall enrollments. Too many people right now are delaying major decisions (like attending college).

I predict a near-universal, massive glut of late summer, last-minute, and late enrollments to most all universities.

But registering for Fall term now? Uh no, a lot of parents and young folks are going to sit on that for a while longer to see if we turn into zombie apocalypse.

Quote from: writingprof on May 03, 2020, 06:44:26 AM

Quote from: no1capybara on May 02, 2020, 02:45:59 PM
Our incoming first year class is down 35% from this time last year.

Here's a hypothesis someone should test. Colleges that are politically correct enough to say "first-year" will have worse fall enrollment  than colleges that still say "freshman," because the students at the former are wealthy and white enough to take (or to have heard of) "gap years."

Meanwhile, the "freshmen" at my poor benighted college have no choice but to show up in the fall, having never heard that taking a year off is an option.

This is really weird to me, but maybe I've been in this business so long, I may not have noticed a shift. It used to be when a graduating high school student said they were taking a "gap year" (and this was  true for wealthy white students), it really meant that they couldn't get into a college that they actually wanted to attend and they didn't want to admit that to their peers, or in the case of middle class/working class students they couldn't afford college and didn't want to admit that to their peers, or they didn't bother applying for college (for students who preferred to enter the workforce right away, but didn't want to say that to all their college-bound peers). IOW, taking a "gap year" was a stigma.

The truly wealthy* (and in some cases famous people) transcend these stigmas, but few kids come from truly wealthy backgrounds (*family with a minimum $6-7 million in liquid assets, apart from retirement/real estate/property like cars/etc., which are assumed to be paid off if lifestyle is not extravagant for income level). 

Quote from: lightning on May 03, 2020, 10:53:33 AM
It used to be when a graduating high school student said they were taking a "gap year" (and this was  true for wealthy white students), it really meant that they couldn't get into a college that they actually wanted to attend and they didn't want to admit that to their peers, or in the case of middle class/working class students they couldn't afford college and didn't want to admit that to their peers, or they didn't bother applying for college (for students who preferred to enter the workforce right away, but didn't want to say that to all their college-bound peers). IOW, taking a "gap year" was a stigma.

In contrast, I've never encountered the term "gap year" as a stigma.  Instead, I'm accustomed to the idea that a gap year was a privilege for someone who was enrolled in something akin to the Peace Corps, doing a religious mission, or pursuing some other activity that is most easily done when one is unencumbered with family responsibilities.  People would give public talks before the start of their gap year on what the goal of the gap year was and then would give public talks at the end of the gap year about what their experiences were.  The talks were usually sponsored by a volunteer service organization like Lions Club, Kiwanis, or Jaycees.

I know a fair number of people who didn't go to college right away for a variety of reasons, but no one I know called that a gap year.  People may have been cagey about the exact reasons (e.g., "oh, I'm saving up money by working full time" instead of "I didn't get into a good enough college" or "I'm helping with a sick family member" instead of "we couldn't afford it this year"), but the term "gap year" was a positive for the handful of lucky people, not a stigma.

At my HS, students took a "gap year" to do Class Afloat. That was the term's exclusive reference.


Yeah, I know.

So far our STEM program is slightly depressed relative to numbers in some previous years, but this isn't always a clean judge for what we end up with for freshmen - so I wouldn't say its outside our natural variability as a program over the past 5 years. University wide, prior to COVID we were tracking well and truly above projections, which was nice, but fully expecting to see some constriction. Thats not a good thing though, as a small class last year is still pushing through and driving cuts.

Quote from: Aster on May 03, 2020, 09:20:40 AM
I believe that it is highly premature to look at current Fall enrollments. Too many people right now are delaying major decisions (like attending college).

I predict a near-universal, massive glut of late summer, last-minute, and late enrollments to most all universities.

But registering for Fall term now? Uh no, a lot of parents and young folks are going to sit on that for a while longer to see if we turn into zombie apocalypse.

I think a larger than normal last-minute enrollment is a given in these circumstances. I expect some to take a look at the financial aid options and conclude that it's better to enroll than to sit at home playing video games and eating junk food all day. The 'gap year' is unlikely to involve working for pay for most of the would-be college freshman. Community colleges will probably be the biggest beneficiaries.

Quote from: tuxthepenguin on May 04, 2020, 09:51:39 AM

Quote from: Aster on May 03, 2020, 09:20:40 AM
I believe that it is highly premature to look at current Fall enrollments. Too many people right now are delaying major decisions (like attending college).

I predict a near-universal, massive glut of late summer, last-minute, and late enrollments to most all universities.

But registering for Fall term now? Uh no, a lot of parents and young folks are going to sit on that for a while longer to see if we turn into zombie apocalypse.

I think a larger than normal last-minute enrollment is a given in these circumstances. I expect some to take a look at the financial aid options and conclude that it's better to enroll than to sit at home playing video games and eating junk food all day. The 'gap year' is unlikely to involve working for pay for most of the would-be college freshman. Community colleges will probably be the biggest beneficiaries.

I'll bet 500 quatloos on a larger-than-normal summer melt for places that can't be fully face-to-face and their biggest selling point was the full-time, residential experience.  I expect a fair number of people to look at their options and conclude that a year of video games and junk food is better than burning through financial aid for a suboptimal college experience.

The community colleges may indeed pick up additional people who want cheaper classes...if indeed those classes will transfer to the degree they really want.

Quote from: writingprof on May 03, 2020, 06:44:26 AM

Quote from: no1capybara on May 02, 2020, 02:45:59 PM
Our incoming first year class is down 35% from this time last year.

Here's a hypothesis someone should test. Colleges that are politically correct enough to say "first-year" will have worse fall enrollment  than colleges that still say "freshman," because the students at the former are wealthy and white enough to take (or to have heard of) "gap years."

Meanwhile, the "freshmen" at my poor benighted college have no choice but to show up in the fall, having never heard that taking a year off is an option.

Hahaha, not sure it's testable in this case - I started to write "freshmen" then changed it to "first year" to not offend anyone.  In any event, the Excel file we get has the columns headings as years.

But my school draws very locally.  We are 100% tuition driven and lot of income comes from student housing.  So it's not a good situation. I predict that more students will be commuting rather than living on campus. I did note that our % of out-of-state applications didn't change and there's no difference in the percent that put down deposits from the last couple years to this year.  Just overall numbers are way down.

I haven't seen numbers for the incoming class yet, but we are worried about international students, who make up ~20% of undergrads and a much larger proportion of some of the masters programs-- even if they want to come, consulates are closed and visas are not being processed. We may have options for them to start online from home and then arrive on campus when their visas come through. The good news is that as a pretty selective university we can probably compensate at least at the undergrad level by going to our domestic wait listed students-- it will be the lucky year for some students on the cusp of admission.

I don't think we'll have a problem with current students not returning at all. So far, my fall class is about where it normally is before the first years enroll in July. Big question is whether I'll be teaching it in person, hybrid, or online -- at least its a big lecture course, so less is lost if we have to go back online then was lost trying to teach my seminar online (though we limbed through OK).

If my university doesn't have the usual menu of Division 3 athletics in the fall -- because there simply isn't any intercollegiate competition -- then there will probably be a big drop in the size of the incoming class. Many will decide that playing video games at home, taking community college courses for far less money, and/or working part-time bagging groceries is better than paying for a residential campus experience that lacks the full residential campus experience.

Quote from: spork on May 04, 2020, 01:43:38 PM
If my university doesn't have the usual menu of Division 3 athletics in the fall -- because there simply isn't any intercollegiate competition -- then there will probably be a big drop in the size of the incoming class. Many will decide that playing video games at home, taking community college courses for far less money, and/or working part-time bagging groceries is better than paying for a residential campus experience that lacks the full residential campus experience.

We don't have the sports, but the rest of this really resonates with our student body.  They WANT to be on campus taking classes in person.   I think we will lose a lot of our "rising sophomores" because they are ending their first year of college by living back at home and taking all classes entirely online.  They hate it, don't think they are getting their money's worth, and are really struggling.  If they are told that next year is more of the same, a lot of them will not come back.

Quote from: polly_mer on May 04, 2020, 10:38:11 AM
I expect a fair number of people to look at their options and conclude that a year of video games and junk food is better than burning through financial aid for a suboptimal college experience.

You're assuming video games and junk food will be on their list of options. A lot of parents are going to be facing a reduced income, and they're going to calculate the cost of the extra food and other expenses that come with having them at home playing video games all day. That type of student will disproportionately enroll at the local community college. And whether they have classes online or in person, they will be able to use financial aid to cover the cost of an apartment and food. The financial aid is a new stream of cash coming in. They'll take advantage of it.

Quote from: Puget on May 04, 2020, 11:46:04 AM
I haven't seen numbers for the incoming class yet, but we are worried about international students, who make up ~20% of undergrads and a much larger proportion of some of the masters programs-- even if they want to come, consulates are closed and visas are not being processed. We may have options for them to start online from home and then arrive on campus when their visas come through. The good news is that as a pretty selective university we can probably compensate at least at the undergrad level by going to our domestic wait listed students-- it will be the lucky year for some students on the cusp of admission.

I don't think we'll have a problem with current students not returning at all. So far, my fall class is about where it normally is before the first years enroll in July. Big question is whether I'll be teaching it in person, hybrid, or online -- at least its a big lecture course, so less is lost if we have to go back online then was lost trying to teach my seminar online (though we limbed through OK).

Losing even more international students is what worries me the most. We already took a huge hit in international enrollment after the 2016 elections, and this pretty much kills off the remaining international students who otherwise would have been willing to put up with the airborne xenophobia.

Three of my classes at full capacity.
One has over a dozen.
And my grad class has a handful but it should fill as grad students arrive on campus.

All my classes will run next semester.

Overall admin is predicting a drop in freshman enrollment, however.  May have an effect on staffing. 

Your university might be on this list: https://www.nacacnet.org/collegeopenings (https://www.nacacnet.org/collegeopenings).

Since the survey is not comprehensive, your university might still have open slots that it is trying to fill even if it is not on the list.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on May 04, 2020, 06:49:30 PM
Three of my classes at full capacity.
One has over a dozen.
And my grad class has a handful but it should fill as grad students arrive on campus.

All my classes will run next semester.

Overall admin is predicting a drop in freshman enrollment, however.  May have an effect on staffing.

The enrollment in my undergrad course is a lot better than it's been in years. That might be informative. It's for juniors and seniors and it provides students with specific job skills (not entirely, but much of the class is devoted to job skills). Maybe there will be a shift in the types of classes students want.

Quote from: spork on May 05, 2020, 02:23:22 AM
Your university might be on this list: https://www.nacacnet.org/collegeopenings (https://www.nacacnet.org/collegeopenings).

Since the survey is not comprehensive, your university might still have open slots that it is trying to fill even if it is not on the list.

I didn't check if mine is on the list. I work at a large public that tries to accommodate all qualified applicants. I'm not familiar with the concept of "open slots" in April - there are open slots the first day of classes.

Quote from: spork on May 05, 2020, 02:23:22 AM
Your university might be on this list: https://www.nacacnet.org/collegeopenings (https://www.nacacnet.org/collegeopenings).

Since the survey is not comprehensive, your university might still have open slots that it is trying to fill even if it is not on the list.

Interesting- thanks for the link. We are not on the list-- I assume if we have open slots we are going to our waitlist, not new applications.
The places in my state on the list were about what you would predict-- little non-selective LACs many of which are familiar from "dire financial straights", and the less-selective publics, which I assume normally enroll students through the summer anyway (and may end up with a counter-cyclical increase in enrollment** I'm guessing).

**I was in grad school at a big state flagship when the '08 recession hit--the undergraduate yield rate went WAY up, as a lot of students who may otherwise have gone to privates or out of state where informed by their parents that finical circumstances had changed and in-state flagship was going to have to do. It was a mess-- they ended up having to house a bunch of students in hotels until dorm space opened up from the usual rate of students not returning spring semester, and there was a mad scramble to add extra sections of classes. This is obviously not a normal recession, so maybe it will be different, but a repeat of this seems like a real possibility for public universities.

Quote from: Puget on May 05, 2020, 09:51:01 AM

Quote from: spork on May 05, 2020, 02:23:22 AM
Your university might be on this list: https://www.nacacnet.org/collegeopenings (https://www.nacacnet.org/collegeopenings).

Since the survey is not comprehensive, your university might still have open slots that it is trying to fill even if it is not on the list.

Interesting- thanks for the link. We are not on the list-- I assume if we have open slots we are going to our waitlist, not new applications.
The places in my state on the list were about what you would predict-- little non-selective LACs many of which are familiar from "dire financial straights", and the less-selective publics, which I assume normally enroll students through the summer anyway (and may end up with a counter-cyclical increase in enrollment** I'm guessing).

**I was in grad school at a big state flagship when the '08 recession hit--the undergraduate yield rate went WAY up, as a lot of students who may otherwise have gone to privates or out of state where informed by their parents that finical circumstances had changed and in-state flagship was going to have to do. It was a mess-- they ended up having to house a bunch of students in hotels until dorm space opened up from the usual rate of students not returning spring semester, and there was a mad scramble to add extra sections of classes. This is obviously not a normal recession, so maybe it will be different, but a repeat of this seems like a real possibility for public universities.

The schools on the list in our state were mostly HBACs with notoriously bad finances.

Quote from: apl68 on May 05, 2020, 10:18:48 AM

Quote from: Puget on May 05, 2020, 09:51:01 AM

Quote from: spork on May 05, 2020, 02:23:22 AM
Your university might be on this list: https://www.nacacnet.org/collegeopenings (https://www.nacacnet.org/collegeopenings).

Since the survey is not comprehensive, your university might still have open slots that it is trying to fill even if it is not on the list.

Interesting- thanks for the link. We are not on the list-- I assume if we have open slots we are going to our waitlist, not new applications.
The places in my state on the list were about what you would predict-- little non-selective LACs many of which are familiar from "dire financial straights", and the less-selective publics, which I assume normally enroll students through the summer anyway (and may end up with a counter-cyclical increase in enrollment** I'm guessing).

**I was in grad school at a big state flagship when the '08 recession hit--the undergraduate yield rate went WAY up, as a lot of students who may otherwise have gone to privates or out of state where informed by their parents that finical circumstances had changed and in-state flagship was going to have to do. It was a mess-- they ended up having to house a bunch of students in hotels until dorm space opened up from the usual rate of students not returning spring semester, and there was a mad scramble to add extra sections of classes. This is obviously not a normal recession, so maybe it will be different, but a repeat of this seems like a real possibility for public universities.

The schools on the list in our state were mostly HBACs with notoriously bad finances.

Not surprised to see my school on the list, both given what I've heard about our enrollment and knowing that we lose students when the state flagship admits from their waitlist. I am surprised to see the state flagship on the list.

Quote from: tuxthepenguin on May 04, 2020, 02:16:20 PM

Quote from: polly_mer on May 04, 2020, 10:38:11 AM
I expect a fair number of people to look at their options and conclude that a year of video games and junk food is better than burning through financial aid for a suboptimal college experience.

You're assuming video games and junk food will be on their list of options. A lot of parents are going to be facing a reduced income, and they're going to calculate the cost of the extra food and other expenses that come with having them at home playing video games all day. That type of student will disproportionately enroll at the local community college. And whether they have classes online or in person, they will be able to use financial aid to cover the cost of an apartment and food. The financial aid is a new stream of cash coming in. They'll take advantage of it.

Where I live, the families that cannot afford to have the aspiring college student just stay home will much more likely be having the aspiring student take one of the open jobs and risk getting sick.  Because community college is relatively cheap here and is either a good drive away or will be completely online, the financial aid trade-off isn't in favor of attending college.  You can make much more money by working and saving the financial aid term for when one can go to the 4-year institution. 

One thing that was very sad to watch at Super Dinky was how many students ran out of financial aid terms because they took a few classes here, a few classes there, and somehow came up to the end of their number of financial aid terms without earning a degree.  Those sagas are known here, too, among those who are so close to the edge that almost no one goes to college full-time to finish in just 4 years.  Many of these students who will instead be working this year would likely have been starting part-time anyway because they need to work to support their families even in the good, before times.

For those of us locally who can afford to have the aspiring college student stay home, the likelihood that attending community college for a term or two is a net overall savings is low.  Elite institutions don't accept most transfer credit and the on-campus experience for the networking is a good fraction of why the elite institutions are worth the extra money.  I live in a weird place in which people who go to the state flagship university are viewed as "losers" so community college is viewed as the place where HS students get a jump on college through dual enrollment and community members take classes in, say, art and languages for their own amusement.

The students from those families are definitely more likely to be staying home and playing video games than burning through their lifetime financial aid eligibility with community college classes that aren't going to transfer.  Many of those students will have already maxed out their dual enrollment credits so there's little to nothing to take at a community college if those credits transfer.

Boston College has already gone to its wait list, after sticking with the traditional May 1 deadline.

My class numbers look fairly similar to normal, although it is always hard to tell. The intro classes in the fall obviously tend to grow a lot when freshmen start doing preregistration in the summer. I also just never understand what factors influence students who register in the last week before class starts.

Quote from: Caracal on May 07, 2020, 05:21:06 PM
My class numbers look fairly similar to normal, although it is always hard to tell. The intro classes in the fall obviously tend to grow a lot when freshmen start doing preregistration in the summer. I also just never understand what factors influence students who register in the last week before class starts.

Sometimes it's a money thing. Students with financial holds at my place cannot register.

CHE is reporting enrollment numbers down and worry that they will stay down (https://www.chronicle.com/article/The-Coronavirus-Enrollment/248724?key=3nPk8ajeoU0Dy8ZoVQauE23YzkYIisoaq96yJiNT3u171HlLkSMzJ1kxHZs-K-LiZ1lEOTZianNWcWEtRWVheUtKS2cxOFlndXJkTzNrc1ZtaTlpT1Uwam9iOA)

Quote from: dr_codex on May 07, 2020, 05:49:03 PM

Quote from: Caracal on May 07, 2020, 05:21:06 PM
My class numbers look fairly similar to normal, although it is always hard to tell. The intro classes in the fall obviously tend to grow a lot when freshmen start doing preregistration in the summer. I also just never understand what factors influence students who register in the last week before class starts.

Sometimes it's a money thing. Students with financial holds at my place cannot register.

Yeah, I'm sure that's true. The effect on my classes just varies enormously. Sometimes I'll have a class that I'm worried won't make and in that last week I suddenly get a ton of students. Other times I'll have classes that get decent numbers in preregistration, but aren't full and the numbers remain basically the same.

Quote from: spork on May 05, 2020, 02:23:22 AM
Your university might be on this list: https://www.nacacnet.org/collegeopenings (https://www.nacacnet.org/collegeopenings).

My college is on that list.  We are down 180 incoming students from this time last year.  $4 million budget shortfall.  Now ACT/SATs are optional.  We are in trouble.

Quote from: polly_mer on May 08, 2020, 06:56:21 AM
CHE is reporting enrollment numbers down and worry that they will stay down (https://www.chronicle.com/article/The-Coronavirus-Enrollment/248724?key=3nPk8ajeoU0Dy8ZoVQauE23YzkYIisoaq96yJiNT3u171HlLkSMzJ1kxHZs-K-LiZ1lEOTZianNWcWEtRWVheUtKS2cxOFlndXJkTzNrc1ZtaTlpT1Uwam9iOA)

It'll be interesting to see what the breakdown of this is at different schools. At the large regional school in a major metro area that I teach at, they are saying their numbers are up for both transfers and incoming freshmen and they are almost at capacity in campus housing.

A Zoom "departmental meeting" said the summer enrollment was up, but the college was broke.  No more coffee in the faculty lounge?  How many are in my fall classes?  None.  But that's because I retired and have only adjuncted from time to time (that means "semester to semester, this one or that one") and am only glad that I did not choose to take on something this spring, escaping that bullet.  And told my chair that, whatever the fall bodes, if it's still on-line, well, I'm afraid I'm an "old dog."  To be sure...

Quote from: Caracal on May 08, 2020, 12:35:09 PM

Quote from: polly_mer on May 08, 2020, 06:56:21 AM
CHE is reporting enrollment numbers down and worry that they will stay down (https://www.chronicle.com/article/The-Coronavirus-Enrollment/248724?key=3nPk8ajeoU0Dy8ZoVQauE23YzkYIisoaq96yJiNT3u171HlLkSMzJ1kxHZs-K-LiZ1lEOTZianNWcWEtRWVheUtKS2cxOFlndXJkTzNrc1ZtaTlpT1Uwam9iOA)

It'll be interesting to see what the breakdown of this is at different schools. At the large regional school in a major metro area that I teach at, they are saying their numbers are up for both transfers and incoming freshmen and they are almost at capacity in campus housing.

It'll be really interesting in the fall if campus housing is not allowed and "everything" is online again.

Quote from: polly_mer on May 10, 2020, 02:46:03 PM

Quote from: Caracal on May 08, 2020, 12:35:09 PM

Quote from: polly_mer on May 08, 2020, 06:56:21 AM
CHE is reporting enrollment numbers down and worry that they will stay down (https://www.chronicle.com/article/The-Coronavirus-Enrollment/248724?key=3nPk8ajeoU0Dy8ZoVQauE23YzkYIisoaq96yJiNT3u171HlLkSMzJ1kxHZs-K-LiZ1lEOTZianNWcWEtRWVheUtKS2cxOFlndXJkTzNrc1ZtaTlpT1Uwam9iOA)

It'll be interesting to see what the breakdown of this is at different schools. At the large regional school in a major metro area that I teach at, they are saying their numbers are up for both transfers and incoming freshmen and they are almost at capacity in campus housing.

It'll be really interesting in the fall if campus housing is not allowed and "everything" is online again.

If students start getting sick (who cares about faculty and staff) and the dorms are once again emptied, that's a multi-million dollar revenue loss regardless of enrollment.

Similarly, IF no one needs to go to campus, then no one needs to park in the garage. IF no one parks, and no revenue is generated, then the money for the bond used to Pay for the parking structure must come out of the general budget. 

In our case, housing is on campus, but I believe that it was actually built by the leasing company and the university only gets a small fraction of the rent.  But even that small fraction is money lost!

Same with food services and the university book store.  These are no longer owned by the university but were sold long ago with long term contracts.  Most likely they involve some sort of percentage lease where the university gets a share of the revenue as well as a small lease payment.  If there are no students, then the percentage of no sales means no money!  I dont know if the recent remodel of the Student Union Building (housing the book store and cafeteria) were paid by the tenants, or with money the university borrowed (and is ultimately responsible for repaying)

For what it is worth, I predict that the bond rating agencies (moody's and Standard and Poor's) will be putting several universities' bonds on credit watch (for potential downgrades) 
But for that matter, unless Congress acts to help cities and states next, the debt of several states may be downgraded soon too!

Howard U's President was on a news show recently.  He suggested that they may open for fall later than usual and conclude the semester early, by Thanksgiving, "to avoid flu season."

So, an attempt to get some revenue from room and board albeit not the usual amount?

Quote from: Cheerful on May 11, 2020, 11:21:19 AM
Howard U's President was on a news show recently.  He suggested that they may open for fall later than usual and conclude the semester early, by Thanksgiving, "to avoid flu season."

So, an attempt to get some revenue from room and board albeit not the usual amount?

Maybe. Or maybe to get in some of the things, like labs, that are really hard to do remotely.

Our Chancellor says that housing & dining are paid out of one part of the budget and have to be "self supporting" while the teaching & classroom spaces are a separate part of the budget.  I doubt it's that simple, but it does imply that students living on campus won't help pay for a tuition shortfall.

Quote from: the_geneticist on May 11, 2020, 01:06:42 PM
Our Chancellor says that housing & dining are paid out of one part of the budget and have to be "self supporting" while the teaching & classroom spaces are a separate part of the budget.  I doubt it's that simple, but it does imply that students living on campus won't help pay for a tuition shortfall.

I've been wondering about this, too. I passed along the question about the food services contract to my boss, heading into the budget crisis meeting. No word back, as of yet.

Quote from: clean on May 11, 2020, 09:41:52 AM

Same with food services and the university book store.  These are no longer owned by the university but were sold long ago with long term contracts.  Most likely they involve some sort of percentage lease where the university gets a share of the revenue as well as a small lease payment.  If there are no students, then the percentage of no sales means no money!  I dont know if the recent remodel of the Student Union Building (housing the book store and cafeteria) were paid by the tenants, or with money the university borrowed (and is ultimately responsible for repaying)

I think it depends. Sometimes the contract is for a fixed sum, other times it seems to be a percentage of the profits. That said, I'm sure regardless, there are provisions in the contract for what happens if the university isn't operational for some reason.

Quote from: the_geneticist on May 11, 2020, 01:06:42 PM
Our Chancellor says that housing & dining are paid out of one part of the budget and have to be "self supporting" while the teaching & classroom spaces are a separate part of the budget.  I doubt it's that simple, but it does imply that students living on campus won't help pay for a tuition shortfall.

My understanding was that many schools were using housing and dining services as cash cows.  Plus, many schools still have a lot of construction debt to pay off, and were depending upon student room and board revenue to do that.

Quote from: Juvenal on May 10, 2020, 02:42:00 PM
A Zoom "departmental meeting" said the summer enrollment was up, but the college was broke.  No more coffee in the faculty lounge?  How many are in my fall classes?  None.  But that's because I retired and have only adjuncted from time to time (that means "semester to semester, this one or that one") and am only glad that I did not choose to take on something this spring, escaping that bullet.  And told my chair that, whatever the fall bodes, if it's still on-line, well, I'm afraid I'm an "old dog."  To be sure...

For the short-lived bloom and contracted span of brief and wretched life is fast fleeting away! While we are drinking and calling for garlands, ointments, and women, old age steals swiftly on with noiseless step. 

(quote from the Roman Juvenal)

My university offers the usual smattering of online graduate and degree completion programs. I have a course in one of these programs scheduled for later this summer. Only two students have registered for it. A colleague is teaching a different course that starts next week. It has four students. Typical enrollments for these courses are ~ 12 students each.

All summer classes here are fully online.  Mine are all full and have waitlists, which is normal.
What's not normal is that we STILL don't have an answer for how fall will be run, students start registering for Fall classes this Friday, and the deadline to pay a deposit to accept a spot in Fall is Monday.  The administration here is so behind on giving any information (useful or otherwise!) it's appalling.

Quote from: the_geneticist on May 11, 2020, 01:06:42 PM
Our Chancellor says that housing & dining are paid out of one part of the budget and have to be "self supporting" while the teaching & classroom spaces are a separate part of the budget.  I doubt it's that simple, but it does imply that students living on campus won't help pay for a tuition shortfall.

"self supporting" in these cases usually mean "we will not subsidize those operations; figure out how to live within your budget and still send sufficient funds to the other side of campus".

Generally, room and board for residential institutions are an additional source of revenue.  That's the callous reason why many smaller institutions have strict rules about who must live on campus.  Yeah, there's the importance of focusing on one's studies and the social benefits of spending one's time with one's peers on campus, but at the root for many struggling institutions is $$$$.

One reason that some tiny colleges have a ton of athletes is net revenue from living on campus, even having to subsidize the teams, comes out as a significant positive cash flow.  At a place like Super Dinky, the goal is those 100ish students on the football who are eager to take out loans to play (i.e., a bigger identifiable group than any one major and sometimes as much as a quarter of the whole student body just in football) and will happily live on campus with crappy cafeteria food.  We'd love to have students from three states away who will live on campus at full price.

The "extra" revenue from room and board can't cover the coming fall's enrollment shortfall because those funds were already being used in many cases to prop up known shortfalls, especially at a place that has a hefty discount rate or was already not getting enough in appropriations from the state.

Quote from: Anselm on May 12, 2020, 01:37:12 PM

Quote from: Juvenal on May 10, 2020, 02:42:00 PM
A Zoom "departmental meeting" said the summer enrollment was up, but the college was broke.  No more coffee in the faculty lounge?  How many are in my fall classes?  None.  But that's because I retired and have only adjuncted from time to time (that means "semester to semester, this one or that one") and am only glad that I did not choose to take on something this spring, escaping that bullet.  And told my chair that, whatever the fall bodes, if it's still on-line, well, I'm afraid I'm an "old dog."  To be sure...

For the short-lived bloom and contracted span of brief and wretched life is fast fleeting away! While we are drinking and calling for garlands, ointments, and women, old age steals swiftly on with noiseless step. 

(quote from the Roman Juvenal)

My garlands are faded; the ointments are for the aching joints; but there is still wine to be had, and better than I could afford when young.

Quote from: polly_mer on May 13, 2020, 10:24:38 AM

Quote from: the_geneticist on May 11, 2020, 01:06:42 PM
Our Chancellor says that housing & dining are paid out of one part of the budget and have to be "self supporting" while the teaching & classroom spaces are a separate part of the budget.  I doubt it's that simple, but it does imply that students living on campus won't help pay for a tuition shortfall.

"self supporting" in these cases usually mean "we will not subsidize those operations; figure out how to live within your budget and still send sufficient funds to the other side of campus".

Generally, room and board for residential institutions are an additional source of revenue.  That's the callous reason why many smaller institutions have strict rules about who must live on campus.  Yeah, there's the importance of focusing on one's studies and the social benefits of spending one's time with one's peers on campus, but at the root for many struggling institutions is $$$$.

One reason that some tiny colleges have a ton of athletes is net revenue from living on campus, even having to subsidize the teams, comes out as a significant positive cash flow.  At a place like Super Dinky, the goal is those 100ish students on the football who are eager to take out loans to play (i.e., a bigger identifiable group than any one major and sometimes as much as a quarter of the whole student body just in football) and will happily live on campus with crappy cafeteria food.  We'd love to have students from three states away who will live on campus at full price.

The "extra" revenue from room and board can't cover the coming fall's enrollment shortfall because those funds were already being used in many cases to prop up known shortfalls, especially at a place that has a hefty discount rate or was already not getting enough in appropriations from the state.

That's also why the large, public universities are going online in Fall, but the SLACs are "committing to in-person learning".  No one is wiling to pay $60,000 to live at home and take freshmen writing 101 online.  The administration wants to support bringing walking-tuition-payments (aka "students") back on campus.

Quote from: the_geneticist on May 14, 2020, 08:37:19 AM
That's also why the large, public universities are going online in Fall, but the SLACs are "committing to in-person learning".  No one is wiling to pay $60,000 to live at home and take freshmen writing 101 online.  The administration wants to support bringing walking-tuition-payments (aka "students") back on campus.

It's hard to imagine many people willing to pay $60000 to live on campus and take freshmen writing 101 in person.

Quote from: marshwiggle on May 14, 2020, 08:44:48 AM

Quote from: the_geneticist on May 14, 2020, 08:37:19 AM
That's also why the large, public universities are going online in Fall, but the SLACs are "committing to in-person learning".  No one is wiling to pay $60,000 to live at home and take freshmen writing 101 online.  The administration wants to support bringing walking-tuition-payments (aka "students") back on campus.

It's hard to imagine many people willing to pay $60000 to live on campus and take freshmen writing 101 in person.

That's the business model for many institutions. Full list price for Super Dinky was more than $40k including tuition, room, board, and fees.

Room and board is about the same in a given region, but tuition varies based on other factors.

The selling point is exactly the on-campus living experience for the small, expensive-for-what-you-get colleges.

Colleges like Super Dinky need people to think that college is always expensive so there's no point in shopping around.

Quote from: marshwiggle on May 14, 2020, 08:44:48 AM

Quote from: the_geneticist on May 14, 2020, 08:37:19 AM
That's also why the large, public universities are going online in Fall, but the SLACs are "committing to in-person learning".  No one is wiling to pay $60,000 to live at home and take freshmen writing 101 online.  The administration wants to support bringing walking-tuition-payments (aka "students") back on campus.

It's hard to imagine many people willing to pay $60000 to live on campus and take freshmen writing 101 in person.

Yes, hard to believe, but to take my employer as an example:

• $21K: annual tuition after 50% average discount rate.
• $16K: campus room and board (required for freshman and sophomore year).

The business model assumes a campus full of students. I'd say it's a coin toss whether those days are permanently over. At minimum, if even part of the fall semester has to be online, the university will have to tap into its endowment.

Quote from: polly_mer on May 14, 2020, 08:59:47 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on May 14, 2020, 08:44:48 AM

Quote from: the_geneticist on May 14, 2020, 08:37:19 AM
That's also why the large, public universities are going online in Fall, but the SLACs are "committing to in-person learning".  No one is wiling to pay $60,000 to live at home and take freshmen writing 101 online.  The administration wants to support bringing walking-tuition-payments (aka "students") back on campus.

It's hard to imagine many people willing to pay $60000 to live on campus and take freshmen writing 101 in person.

That's the business model for many institutions. Full list price for Super Dinky was more than $40k including tuition, room, board, and fees.

Room and board is about the same in a given region, but tuition varies based on other factors.

The selling point is exactly the on-campus living experience for the small, expensive-for-what-you-get colleges.

Colleges like Super Dinky need people to think that college is always expensive so there's no point in shopping around.

Yep, and they offer "amazing discounts" on financial aid for almost all students so they think they are getting a great value because $30,000 doesn't sound expensive compared to $60,000.  Very few students pay full sticker price.  They push the idea that students will get to do all the things: double-major, join clubs, play sports, travel abroad, do research, etc.  Which is true if you can make it through the first year of larger than you hoped for class sizes taught by more adjuncts than we like to admit we hire.
I used to work at a super-dinky as well.  Freshman basketweaving 101 type classes were approaching the "big school classroom experience with the small school price tag". 

Had the faculty-wide meeting today. Application numbers were already significantly down before COVID, but we're now sitting at 44% of last year's application numbers for the fall.

Quote from: the_geneticist on May 14, 2020, 09:30:58 AM
Yep, and they offer "amazing discounts" on financial aid for almost all students so they think they are getting a great value because $30,000 doesn't sound expensive compared to $60,000.  Very few students pay full sticker price.  They push the idea that students will get to do all the things: double-major, join clubs, play sports, travel abroad, do research, etc.  Which is true if you can make it through the first year of larger than you hoped for class sizes taught by more adjuncts than we like to admit we hire.

I used to work at a super-dinky as well.  Freshman basketweaving 101 type classes were approaching the "big school classroom experience with the small school price tag".

To my Super Dinky's credit, we didn't go the adjunct route for intro classes nor were those intro classes large--to the dismay of several faculty members.  Some faculty members would have much preferred one lecture section of 50 instead of three lecture sections capped at 20 that would get out of sync almost from the first week.  Other faculty members would have preferred that someone else teach the intro classes.

One of the main selling points we had was small classes, so we were going to have small sections even if that meant that "everyone" was teaching freshman seminar and there were almost no electives to be found.

I remember one faculty member who became chair in part because she then had course releases and a choice of which course she would teach.  That choice was never the intro classes.  She liked juniors who had already been weeded and were then sections filled with college-capable students.

If one attended Super Dinky to play sports and take small classes with a full-time faculty member, then we definitely delivered.  However, smart shoppers who really wanted a solid college education would have been paying substantially less for more choices (and sometimes better choices) of academic/club/networking experiences elsewhere.

Projected numbers for our department are actually a bit higher than last Fall.  Of course, a projection this early doesn't mean too much since we honestly won't know how many students we'll have in Fall until the first day of Fall.

In other "super exciting news", Fall registration has started, but the Provost has yet to tell the students the plan for Fall classes (it's going to be online with very, very few exceptions) OR if they will be allowing students to live on campus even if their classes are online.

Quote from: the_geneticist on May 19, 2020, 11:25:50 AM
In other "super exciting news", Fall registration has started, but the Provost has yet to tell the students the plan for Fall classes (it's going to be online with very, very few exceptions) OR if they will be allowing students to live on campus even if their classes are online.

1.  This seems really late to start fall registration, unless you mean only for new students.

2.  Knowing the plan and options for on-campus housing seem very important to people who are really planners and would be registering now.

Quote from: polly_mer on May 19, 2020, 01:08:18 PM

Quote from: the_geneticist on May 19, 2020, 11:25:50 AM
In other "super exciting news", Fall registration has started, but the Provost has yet to tell the students the plan for Fall classes (it's going to be online with very, very few exceptions) OR if they will be allowing students to live on campus even if their classes are online.

1.  This seems really late to start fall registration, unless you mean only for new students.

2.  Knowing the plan and options for on-campus housing seem very important to people who are really planners and would be registering now.

1. This is registration for all continuing students.  Freshmen register over the summer.
2. I agree!

I think our Provost is a coward who is hoping that students will commit to paying for classes before they know what they are paying for.  Classic bait-and-switch dangling the hope of in-person classes as the bait.

Quote from: the_geneticist on May 19, 2020, 11:25:50 AM


In other "super exciting news", Fall registration has started, but the Provost has yet to tell the students the plan for Fall classes (it's going to be online with very, very few exceptions) OR if they will be allowing students to live on campus even if their classes are online.

If they already have the "almost all online" decision, not communicating it is just wrong in my mind. I get the desire to get money in the bank first, but that's...wrong? Also, I just assume this is where my institution is at, too, with me just not being in the know enough to know they've made the online call.

Quote from: the_geneticist on May 19, 2020, 01:55:24 PM

Quote from: polly_mer on May 19, 2020, 01:08:18 PM

Quote from: the_geneticist on May 19, 2020, 11:25:50 AM
In other "super exciting news", Fall registration has started, but the Provost has yet to tell the students the plan for Fall classes (it's going to be online with very, very few exceptions) OR if they will be allowing students to live on campus even if their classes are online.

1.  This seems really late to start fall registration, unless you mean only for new students.

2.  Knowing the plan and options for on-campus housing seem very important to people who are really planners and would be registering now.

1. This is registration for all continuing students.  Freshmen register over the summer.
2. I agree!

I think our Provost is a coward who is hoping that students will commit to paying for classes before they know what they are paying for.  Classic bait-and-switch dangling the hope of in-person classes as the bait.

What's the Provost's plan for when expected students just don't check in during August, don't log in for fall classes, and throw away the tuition bills for an institution they have decided to not attend this fall after all?

Quote from: polly_mer on May 19, 2020, 04:51:06 PM

Quote from: the_geneticist on May 19, 2020, 01:55:24 PM

Quote from: polly_mer on May 19, 2020, 01:08:18 PM

Quote from: the_geneticist on May 19, 2020, 11:25:50 AM
In other "super exciting news", Fall registration has started, but the Provost has yet to tell the students the plan for Fall classes (it's going to be online with very, very few exceptions) OR if they will be allowing students to live on campus even if their classes are online.

1.  This seems really late to start fall registration, unless you mean only for new students.

2.  Knowing the plan and options for on-campus housing seem very important to people who are really planners and would be registering now.

1. This is registration for all continuing students.  Freshmen register over the summer.
2. I agree!

I think our Provost is a coward who is hoping that students will commit to paying for classes before they know what they are paying for.  Classic bait-and-switch dangling the hope of in-person classes as the bait.

What's the Provost's plan for when expected students just don't check in during August, don't log in for fall classes, and throw away the tuition bills for an institution they have decided to not attend this fall after all?

Accept more folks from the waitlists?  Pray the academic senate doesn't vote him out?  Decide the "retire early" and pass the whole mess on to the next Provost?
My bet is on the latter.

I've certainly seen some examples over the years of someone who didn't care all that much because the fecal matter would hit the fan after a retirement/end of contract/other-known-to-only-a-handful-of-people date.

Quote from: polly_mer on May 20, 2020, 08:00:13 AM
I've certainly seen some examples over the years of someone who didn't care all that much because the fecal matter would hit the fan after a retirement/end of contract/other-known-to-only-a-handful-of-people date.

My favorite was the outgoing guy who "wouldn't make [unpopular decision] because it would not be fair to [new guy]."

Here, New Guy, is a flaming bag of excrement for you on your first day. Have fun!

We are currently ~ 10% down from "normal" on deposits, where normal is what would have been sufficient under the old May 1 deadline. Apparently some of our competitors are looking at declines twice that large. All these schools will be trying to recruit bodies over the summer.

The question is not whether we will break even but how large the financial hit is going to be. It looks like the state is going to impose a dorm occupancy rule of either one or two people per room, which means some students will need to be housed in hotels at university expense, so no matter what operational costs will exceed revenue. Financially it probably makes more sense to keep the campus closed, but I suspect administrators fear announcing that fall semester will be online will tank the retention rate and the admissions yield.

Quote from: dr_codex on May 20, 2020, 09:41:19 AM

Quote from: polly_mer on May 20, 2020, 08:00:13 AM
I've certainly seen some examples over the years of someone who didn't care all that much because the fecal matter would hit the fan after a retirement/end of contract/other-known-to-only-a-handful-of-people date.

My favorite was the outgoing guy who "wouldn't make [unpopular decision] because it would not be fair to [new guy]."

Here, New Guy, is a flaming bag of excrement for you on your first day. Have fun!

Yep!  I remember being the one who had to keep breaking the bad news to the new president.  The new president kept telling me that I must be mistaken because that would have been a big deal with committees, task forces, etc. working for  a year and surely the chair of the board of trustees would have mentioned all those things.

Yes, that's the way an institution that wanted to survive would have approached the problem.  That's not what we've been doing for the last year under the president who wasn't allowed to do anything and the provost who was trying to fix things without letting anyone know how bad the situation was. 

Those two were both gone now and here are the multiple flaming bags of excrement for you, New Guy!

Quote from: spork on May 20, 2020, 10:33:13 AM
We are currently ~ 10% down from "normal" on deposits, where normal is what would have been sufficient under the old May 1 deadline. Apparently some of our competitors are looking at declines twice that large. All these schools will be trying to recruit bodies over the summer.

The question is not whether we will break even but how large the financial hit is going to be. It looks like the state is going to impose a dorm occupancy rule of either one or two people per room, which means some students will need to be housed in hotels at university expense, so no matter what operational costs will exceed revenue. Financially it probably makes more sense to keep the campus closed, but I suspect administrators fear announcing that fall semester will be online will tank the retention rate and the admissions yield.

That might not be so bad for the students if they have access to a pool, hot tub and continental breakfast.  Now, I can see a problem if these same schools plan on having football proceed on schedule.  Many towns have no hotel rooms for a 60 mile radius on game weekends.

We've just been told to have a plan ready for a 30% drop in enrollment, and to identify sections/jobs to cut.

Happily, it looks like humanities will be experiencing a much smaller drop than that, and even at the top of the payscale we can run a (modest) profit even with a 45% drop in enrollment in each class. And in my department, it looks like we won't need to cut any sections or faculty--in fact, if my colleague who's ill doesn't return for the winter, we'll have to hire someone new to shoulder the extra courseload.


Phew.

Quote from: Parasaurolophus on May 22, 2020, 02:15:33 PM
Happily, it looks like humanities will be experiencing a much smaller drop than that, and even at the top of the payscale we can run a (modest) profit even with a 45% drop in enrollment in each class.

Are you usually subsidizing the institution and they will be in a bad way if your departmental course enrollment drops?

Quote from: polly_mer on May 22, 2020, 02:30:34 PM

Are you usually subsidizing the institution and they will be in a bad way if your departmental course enrollment drops?

I haven't been here long enough to have a good picture of the history (or how the admin sees things), but back-of-the-envelope-wise it looks like for the last few years we generated around $345k per semester in the fall and winter, and another $115k in the summer, assuming all our faculty earn the top rate (we don't!) and counting retirement contributions and the like. That obviously leaves other costs like admin and rooms and stuff, but I dunno how to factor all of those in. So, around $800k over the course of the year. So: that's nothing to sneeze at, but we're a pretty small department and it's a drop in the university bucket.

My key takeaway from today's meeting is that there's an enormous population of students (primarily international) who still need to pass through our department on their way to graduation, but who haven't yet done so. So our enrollment decline is expected to be relatively small (~10%), but we can weather a much larger decline for the time being.

English, however, is a different story because they're a much, much larger department and don't have the same bottleneck.

Quote from: Parasaurolophus on May 22, 2020, 03:26:09 PM

Quote from: polly_mer on May 22, 2020, 02:30:34 PM

Are you usually subsidizing the institution and they will be in a bad way if your departmental course enrollment drops?

I haven't been here long enough to have a good picture of the history (or how the admin sees things), but back-of-the-envelope-wise it looks like for the last few years we generated around $345k per semester in the fall and winter, and another $115k in the summer, assuming all our faculty earn the top rate (we don't!) and counting retirement contributions and the like. That obviously leaves other costs like admin and rooms and stuff, but I dunno how to factor all of those in. So, around $800k over the course of the year. So: that's nothing to sneeze at, but we're a pretty small department and it's a drop in the university bucket.

My key takeaway from today's meeting is that there's an enormous population of students (primarily international) who still need to pass through our department on their way to graduation, but who haven't yet done so. So our enrollment decline is expected to be relatively small (~10%), but we can weather a much larger decline for the time being.

English, however, is a different story because they're a much, much larger department and don't have the same bottleneck.

There will be a formula for what to add for admin costs, per student. I had to do the math once to find the break-even point for summer courses. It was relatively easy because all students paid the same per credit (not true during the regular year, with all kinds of rates), and all faculty were paid the same flat stipend. You need two pieces of information: "fringe" (the cost of benefits, usually a percentage that fluctuates year to year) and "overhead" (which may have been a number that the person I was dealing with made up on the fly, but which was stated with great confidence). We didn't need to by hyper-accurate since we were only interested in the whole number over the break-even point.

One thing that this exercise brought home to me was how much harder this would be to do for class sizes in regular semesters. You'd only really be able to do it in the aggregate, not by course.

One financial problem at Super Dinky was having too many students come in with gen ed requirements already met.  The filled gen ed sections historically helped subsidize courses with expensive equipment, safety-required small caps, and relatively expensive faculty.

I could see this being a similar problem for even more institutions in the fall as perhaps upper-division majors stay on track and new students defer or otherwise skip fall.

I assume that places like SD simply cannot get away with saying that  gen ed classes that entering freshmen (as opposed to transfer students) have taken at their local cc, etc., cannot be used to cover their SD undergrad gen ed reqs, unlike places like dear alma mater, where that is absolutely forbidden, and where there is also even only a very small ability to actually get graduation credits from AP exams (indeed, dear alma mater does not even use 'academic credits' at all, merely requiring students to take 4 classes a semester, times 8 semesters, plus 4 'winter study' January term ones).  I get why places like SD would not want to risk forbidding this, but, like it or not, most gen ed cc-type classes that could be taken and passed adequately by a 17yo are probably not really worth a serious undergrad degree credit consideration either.

Spoke to a colleague who works at a major state university campus with 15,000 students. Faculty there are being told that fall enrollment might be down 20-30 percent.

Quote from: kaysixteen on May 22, 2020, 10:33:02 PM
I assume that places like SD simply cannot get away with saying that  gen ed classes that entering freshmen (as opposed to transfer students) have taken at their local cc, etc., cannot be used to cover their SD undergrad gen ed reqs, unlike places like dear alma mater, where that is absolutely forbidden, and where there is also even only a very small ability to actually get graduation credits from AP exams (indeed, dear alma mater does not even use 'academic credits' at all, merely requiring students to take 4 classes a semester, times 8 semesters, plus 4 'winter study' January term ones).  I get why places like SD would not want to risk forbidding this, but, like it or not, most gen ed cc-type classes that could be taken and passed adequately by a 17yo are probably not really worth a serious undergrad degree credit consideration either.

Until very recently, SD did indeed have a specialty gen ed so that transfer credit mostly went into electives.  However, a new provost required renovation of gen ed and a new president made transfer scholarships.

The problem then was indeed that SD lost money even with the larger pool because the students who were attracted needed fewer credits.

My local high school has so many dual enrollment students that we don't really do AP classes any more.  Instead, the college-bound students go across the street to the community college and often finish with an associate's degree.  The elite institutions still require four full years at their institution, but students spent their HS years on real study.

We lose a bit of money on this same issue, but the folks coming in with the most credit are usually our better students. We have to be loose with allowing credits or we don't get the the student. Fortunately for us and probably them, most decide to stay 3 or 4 years anyway, even if they have an associates degree. This is so they can play a sport or double major. My advice would be to lean in and try to get more if they are good and stay. But the problem isn't so simple. It's hard for us to get those few good folks with lots of credits, and then when we win the battle, we still lose, because they don't pay for a full 4 years, plus we have to bribe them all with a huge discount.

Bottom line ....it behooves us to attract rich kids who are good enough to not have real huge problems, but aren't so smart that they come in with CC or AP credit.....and don't need and can't qualify for big discounts.

Quote from: Ruralguy on May 23, 2020, 06:59:34 AM
We lose a bit of money on this same issue, but the folks coming in with the most credit are usually our better students. We have to be loose with allowing credits or we don't get the the student. Fortunately for us and probably them, most decide to stay 3 or 4 years anyway, even if they have an associates degree. This is so they can play a sport or double major. My advice would be to lean in and try to get more if they are good and stay. But the problem isn't so simple. It's hard for us to get those few good folks with lots of credits, and then when we win the battle, we still lose, because they don't pay for a full 4 years, plus we have to bribe them all with a huge discount.

Bottom line ....it behooves us to attract rich kids who are good enough to not have real huge problems, but aren't so smart that they come in with CC or AP credit.....and don't need and can't qualify for big discounts.

I have been arguing for the bolded section for years to no effect. The CFO is wedded to a business model of forcing all undergrads to complete eight semesters as full-time students and live on campus for as many of those semesters as possible. And now we see the stupidity of putting all your eggs in one basket.

Super Dinky had the additional problems of few majors in which doing gen ed elsewhere and finishing at Super Dinky for two years really made sense.

For example, nursing does stack (LPN, RN, BSN), but very few RNs want to go directly into a full-time BSN program.  They got the RN so they could work and eventually go back part-time. Few people transfer in junior year, unless the program closes.

We had many transfer students get poor advising so that instead of having 2+2 or 2+3, the students had 40 credits left still spread over almost four years due to the prerequisites in their major that should have been taken their first year.

Overall, yes, SD had people more likely to graduate who transferred with an associate's degree, but that generally meant more people who discovered that a BS in psychology was possible by taking almost all the required courses senior year (needed to have taken intro prior to senior year) on top of essentially random electives and good enough gen eds.  We had a lot of pre-meds, CJ, pre-nursing, and aspiring social workers who graduated with psychology degrees.

By the time I left, the only degree at SD that even remotely resembled a liberal arts degree was psychology with a third electives, a third gen ed, and a third major courses for a total of 120 credits.

Quote from: Ruralguy on May 23, 2020, 06:59:34 AM
Bottom line ....it behooves us to attract rich kids who are good enough to not have real huge problems, but aren't so smart that they come in with CC or AP credit.....and don't need and can't qualify for big discounts.

I was told that was SD's successful business model until about 15 years ago and still was the unsuccessful hope.

We don't have enough dumb rich kids to make this our model, but we can factor in a certain percentage to help subsidize the discount for the smart poor kids.

Quote from: polly_mer on May 23, 2020, 02:53:12 PM

Quote from: Ruralguy on May 23, 2020, 06:59:34 AM
Bottom line ....it behooves us to attract rich kids who are good enough to not have real huge problems, but aren't so smart that they come in with CC or AP credit.....and don't need and can't qualify for big discounts.

I was told that was SD's successful business model until about 15 years ago and still was the unsuccessful hope.

This strategy might explain why my alma mater recently added lacrosse and ice hockey teams.

Sounds like they are competing for the  PA and northward contingent.
Good luck!

No semi-official numbers on new student deposits yet, but I did hear about an incoming student who thought it smart to put derogatory comments on several social media platforms. He's no longer an incoming student. I guess we are admitting anyone who is breathing.

Quote from: polly_mer on May 23, 2020, 02:53:12 PM

Quote from: Ruralguy on May 23, 2020, 06:59:34 AM
Bottom line ....it behooves us to attract rich kids who are good enough to not have real huge problems, but aren't so smart that they come in with CC or AP credit.....and don't need and can't qualify for big discounts.

I was told that was SD's successful business model until about 15 years ago and still was the unsuccessful hope.

The SLAC I used to work at had a similar model.  And combined it with "We need to grow!" 
They dropped the math requirements the same year they added a football team.  (surely just a coincidence .. . . )
But they really messed up and ended up giving out MORE financial aid dollars by admitting more students.

Quote from: dr_codex on April 30, 2020, 09:58:24 AM
We just got our update. New undergraduate deposits down 8% from this point last year. Incoming transfers up, and probably going to be way up. Grad students too early to call. Lots of current students not yet registered -- I'd guess that there are lots of holds on accounts, for finances and for housing issues.

If this holds up, it will actually balance out our cohorts somewhat, and help to fix a hole caused by higher than usual withdrawals two years ago.

Update: New undergraduate deposits even (well, down 1 student), so the class is full. Transfer deposits up 45%. Grad students the same as last year.

The known unknown is how many returning students might not return. That said, we look to be in better shape than pre-Covid.

As I posted before, we are counter-cyclical: low tuition, jobs oriented, and specialized. The financial crisis saw an equivalent rise in enrollment.

One thing I was wrong about: I was expecting enrollment numbers to fluctuate a lot as events unfolded over the summer.

But it turns out that my numbers for my fall classes have remained steady, with no more fluctuation than in previous years. Every week or two a new student will enroll in the ones that have spaces. If things proceed as usual, there will be a bunch of additions in August.

We seemed to have actually gained a bit!!!!

We believe these are people who would otherwise have gone down the road to one of the relatively prestigious schools in the region which tend to siphon off the really good students, probably folks who are avoiding the dorms or are unwilling to pay the prestige-school prices for online classes.  They  are apparently filling out some cheap gen-eds while they wait out the plague Decameron-style.

Our admin apparently doesn't realize this, at least not from a negotiating standpoint.  Dirty pool.

We're 1% down from this time last year, after budgeting based for 8% decline. Still recruiting, but major question now is how many will show up.

Quote from: Vkw10 on July 07, 2020, 07:17:37 PM
We're 1% down from this time last year, after budgeting based for 8% decline. Still recruiting, but major question now is how many will show up.

I'm not privy to all the numbers, but our enrollment is holding steady, looking like previous years, yet somehow, admin rolled over like dead dogs when politicians told them there isn't enough $ due to COVID-19, and are forcing budget cuts down our throats.

As has been said many times, "Never let a good crisis go to waste." I'm just too exhausted to fight it anymore.

Around 13% down as of today.  Which is an improvement over the 18% down we were a few weeks ago.

Departmentally, all our classes are full except for 4, and all of the full courses have waitlists between 50%-100% of the course cap. So we're good on that front.

The university is a little worse off, but it's manageable. Apparently the admin is anticipating we'll be delivering 40% of our courses F2F in 2021-22.

I haven't looked at our CC's district wide numbers, but my sections will all make, except (probably) the F2F/now Live Virtual Lecture (LVL) lit class, and that's fine.

This is surprising, since I have two (online) sections completely full, another online at the "make" number, and my F2F LVL also made; a second-8 weeks online overload section will also make, as it's just one shy of that number already today.  It's surprising because traditionally all my F2F sections make, though it often takes until the last week before classes start; I have the reputation of being haaaaard and meeeeaaaan (probably true in students' eyes, since I actually hold them to deadlines and other policies).

Looking in our department, one other guy (a/k/a "Mr. Easy") has all four of his sections full.  The other four FT faculty and all adjuncts have nearly all their sections sitting in single digits, whether F2F or LVL offerings. I've religiously watched our enrollments via the interactive schedule for years, since being the adjunct faculty coordinator in 2006 and later the department chair, and while our campus' students are always traditionally VERY slow in registering, I've never seen numbers this bad in late July.  And it's no coincidence that the online sections have filled already; both Mr. Easy and I have taught online for 15+ years, and I know students are asking each other for referrals to faculty who are long-term online teachers (rather than those who were tossed into teaching online because of the pandemic).

Theoretically CC's should do big business while other schools' plans remain in flux or they return F2F or hybrid; we'll see if that proves out.  I'm just glad my load is made--one less thing to worry about, even if I'm not wild about doing a section LVL.

20% Of Harvard's First-Year Class Has Deferred
https://www.forbes.com/sites/brandonbusteed/2020/08/07/20-of-harvards-first-year-class-has-deferred/amp/

I should also post this in the positivity thread, because my struggling, small, not-selective LAC was "only" down 25% in terms of first year students.

The real question is who shows up in fall 2021 for anyone.

Quote from: TreadingLife on August 08, 2020, 02:57:12 PM

20% Of Harvard's First-Year Class Has Deferred
https://www.forbes.com/sites/brandonbusteed/2020/08/07/20-of-harvards-first-year-class-has-deferred/amp/

I should also post this in the positivity thread, because my struggling, small, not-selective LAC was "only" down 25% in terms of first year students.

The real question is who shows up in fall 2021 for anyone.

My guess is that as opening day arrives, these numbers are going to climb. The only reason that they are not already huge is that the traditional gap year options (working and traveling) are also not especially attractive in the age of Covid-19.

Fears of this are the only rational explanation for some pretty puzzling statements about how things will roll out in a month.

Our institution is currently reporting that Fall enrollments are down by 30%.

My institution (public R2) is reporting 1% down on enrollment, but 5% down on student credit hour registration. Semester starts in two weeks, with 30% of classes fully f2f, 30% fully online, and rest a mixture. For f2f classes, faculty are required to allow students to attend via zoom unless the course requires hands on activities (licensure requirements, etc.).

What I'd like to know is where we are with tuition and fee payment. I've heard that financial aid is working with some students to reinstate financial aid packages that were declined earlier in summer.

https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2020/08/10/survey-40-percent-freshmen-may-not-enroll-any-four-year-college (https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2020/08/10/survey-40-percent-freshmen-may-not-enroll-any-four-year-college)

Quote from: dr_codex on August 08, 2020, 04:10:02 PM

Quote from: TreadingLife on August 08, 2020, 02:57:12 PM

20% Of Harvard's First-Year Class Has Deferred
https://www.forbes.com/sites/brandonbusteed/2020/08/07/20-of-harvards-first-year-class-has-deferred/amp/

I should also post this in the positivity thread, because my struggling, small, not-selective LAC was "only" down 25% in terms of first year students.

The real question is who shows up in fall 2021 for anyone.

My guess is that as opening day arrives, these numbers are going to climb. The only reason that they are not already huge is that the traditional gap year options (working and traveling) are also not especially attractive in the age of Covid-19.

Fears of this are the only rational explanation for some pretty puzzling statements about how things will roll out in a month.

If this had happened when I was a college student, I wouldn't have really considered just skipping the semester or year. What would I have done instead? Better to be busy and engaged than sitting around at home.

I can understand skipping in the fall, but by spring Lord Biden will have arrived to save us.  You're hurting his economy then, which is presumably not part of the plan.

We are up  (slightly) Fall to Fall in hours, bodies and money.

Quote from: TreadingLife on August 08, 2020, 02:57:12 PM

20% Of Harvard's First-Year Class Has Deferred
https://www.forbes.com/sites/brandonbusteed/2020/08/07/20-of-harvards-first-year-class-has-deferred/amp/

I should also post this in the positivity thread, because my struggling, small, not-selective LAC was "only" down 25% in terms of first year students.

The real question is who shows up in fall 2021 for anyone.

Harvard's endowment is so large that they could pay freshmen to defer for a year.  They will be just fine.
I would put money on a lot of SLACs going under if the pandemic lasts more than 1 year.

Quote from: the_geneticist on August 10, 2020, 01:21:41 PM
I would put money on a lot of SLACs going under if the pandemic lasts more than 1 year.

It would be interesting to define what we all mean by "lasts." 

= is still in the news?
= is still infecting "x" new people per day?
= has resulted in no vaccine?

I don't really believe, like Donald Trump Jr., that COVID will instantaneously vanish the minute Biden is sworn in.  But I'd be shocked if it remains front-page news for long after that.

Quote from: Aster on August 08, 2020, 05:29:09 PM
Our institution is currently reporting that Fall enrollments are down by 30%.

And... one week later, that 30% is now less than 20%.

And that's usually exactly how registration goes at Big Urban College. Nobody signs up early. Lots of people wait until the last minute to register. The pandemic doesn't seem to have altered this pattern much. Unfortunately, nobody told this to our gaggle of brand new senior new administrators that thinks the sky is falling.

At our current rate of new student registrations, by the time our semester starts, I'm expecting that we'll be down by maybe 10-ish%, tops. In some disciplines we're already full up, but the admin have blocked us from adding in new course sections. That's a bit dim-witted in my opinion.

College wide we are down 18% from the same time as last year. Lots of angst and vague threatening about job security going around. The main issue is that we'll feel the kick in the budget from the state a year from now when we will likely have a larger student population.
Department-wise we are only slightly down, mostly in our electives. All of our core classes are close to capacity, we had to add a section to meet demand last minute. What this says to me is that, assuming we retain our normal percentage of students, we will be experiencing a cut in budget just as we have a wave of students taking electives to finish their degrees. When I ran the report recently we are up 18 majors from last year.
Good times.

Quote from: onehappyunicorn on August 12, 2020, 06:39:07 AM
College wide we are down 18% from the same time as last year. Lots of angst and vague threatening about job security going around. The main issue is that we'll feel the kick in the budget from the state a year from now when we will likely have a larger student population.
Department-wise we are only slightly down, mostly in our electives. All of our core classes are close to capacity, we had to add a section to meet demand last minute. What this says to me is that, assuming we retain our normal percentage of students, we will be experiencing a cut in budget just as we have a wave of students taking electives to finish their degrees. When I ran the report recently we are up 18 majors from last year.
Good times.

This is what we've been seeing at my CC too.  We've had to add a couple sections of majors classes, and cancel a boatload of non-majors classes.

Lots of problems with this Inside Higher Ed article:

https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2020/08/24/will-students-show-private-colleges (https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2020/08/24/will-students-show-private-colleges).

For example, Assumption University is reporting an increased number of deposits in June compared to last year, but there's no figure for the number of students who planned to attend August of last year. So no ability to determine if deposits are going up while the size of the incoming class is going down, or if the summer melt rate has changed.

Numbers are in today. Our enrollment is down... 0.8%.

Quote from: Parasaurolophus on August 27, 2020, 11:09:22 AM
Numbers are in today. Our enrollment is down... 0.8%.

That seems survivable -- though it might be that revenue is down more than that.

I am wondering whether schools that made drastic cuts in faculty pay and benefits because of fears about the future, and which are now doing pretty well, are planning to give that money back to faculty.

Quote from: downer on August 27, 2020, 11:21:06 AM

Quote from: Parasaurolophus on August 27, 2020, 11:09:22 AM
Numbers are in today. Our enrollment is down... 0.8%.

That seems survivable -- though it might be that revenue is down more than that.

I am wondering whether schools that made drastic cuts in faculty pay and benefits because of fears about the future, and which are now doing pretty well, are planning to give that money back to faculty.

Even if enrollment is OK, all the extra expenses, lack of auxiliary revenue, and cuts to state funding means even an institution doing 'pretty well' on the enrollment side will come up overall short.

There's no scenario under which most faculty at most places end up with rollbacks on furloughs and pay cuts. That's ignoring the actual financial situation of which enrollment is only part.

 Enrollment numbers as of this morning: -6.5% undergraduate, -5.2% graduate.  The largest drop we are seeing is in the number of transfer students we would normally be enrolling now.

I am still getting inquiries about adding to sections.  I suspect an uptick b/w now and the start on Wednesday.

Quote from: polly_mer on August 27, 2020, 11:56:48 AM

Quote from: downer on August 27, 2020, 11:21:06 AM

Quote from: Parasaurolophus on August 27, 2020, 11:09:22 AM
Numbers are in today. Our enrollment is down... 0.8%.

That seems survivable -- though it might be that revenue is down more than that.

I am wondering whether schools that made drastic cuts in faculty pay and benefits because of fears about the future, and which are now doing pretty well, are planning to give that money back to faculty.

Even if enrollment is OK, all the extra expenses, lack of auxiliary revenue, and cuts to state funding means even an institution doing 'pretty well' on the enrollment side will come up overall short.

There's no scenario under which most faculty at most places end up with rollbacks on furloughs and pay cuts. That's ignoring the actual financial situation of which enrollment is only part.

A sobering reality for me is this. I'm at a place that has done relatively well in terms of enrollment and in terms of bringing in extramural funding, even during the Great Recession. Our enrollment is still doing just fine. So what is our reward for doing what we were supposed to be doing for as long as I can remember, at the behest of politicians and administrators?

---Since we were and are doing so well in terms of enrollment, external funding, and finding ways to control costs, we supposedly don't need as much state support that we've been getting. All they needed was an excuse to cut and they got one in COVID-19. We should have just been sucking all this time. Financially, we would have ended up in the exact same place.

Quote from: lightning on August 27, 2020, 02:30:18 PM
A sobering reality for me is this. I'm at a place that has done relatively well in terms of enrollment and in terms of bringing in extramural funding, even during the Great Recession. Our enrollment is still doing just fine. So what is our reward for doing what we were supposed to be doing for as long as I can remember, at the behest of politicians and administrators?

---Since we were and are doing so well in terms of enrollment, external funding, and finding ways to control costs, we supposedly don't need as much state support that we've been getting. All they needed was an excuse to cut and they got one in COVID-19. We should have just been sucking all this time. Financially, we would have ended up in the exact same place.

Is the enrollment a high percentage of full pay folks (or international or out of state) or has it changed to be the same enrollment, but with less money coming in per person?  A lot of places will be short this year even with the same number of students because an in-state student pays so much less than international.

Is the enrollment that's constant in overall numbers still divided among the same programs?  Or, are the expensive-to-deliver programs growing while the programs that cost far less to deliver losing enrollment? I watched a provost almost cry when he realized we were losing almost $500/course/nursing student.  Yep, our nursing program was always full to the point that we rejected applicants every year, but English is so much cheaper to deliver and yet we only had about one English major per year.

What kind of external funding? Overhead on research may have already been too little to cover the additional costs of doing research, let alone the additional costs related to anything COVID.  I wish Daniel_von_Flanagan was still here with the soapbox on how frequently externally funded research actually costs the university because it doesn't cover all the costs.

What percentage of your institution's revenue was from auxiliary services?  Just because the faculty individually are doing wonderful things doesn't mean the 20-40% of the overall budget revenue from the auxiliary services is easy to replace when the campus goes virtual or is even just substantially less populated.

Faculty are necessary to run the institution, but faculty alone are insufficient to keep the institution in the black.

From last fall, Paddington U is down 9.2% in enrollment and 10.2% in total semester credit hours. That's not good, is it? (I know it's not good.)

Latest numbers: overall enrollment up. Incoming undergraduate fractionally lower (and probably rightly so); transfer and grad both up -- in percentage a lot, in total numbers an appreciable amount.

It turns out that remote recruiting was so successful that it will be adopted permanently. It took a pandemic, but I'll take it.

Quote from: lightning on August 27, 2020, 02:30:18 PM

Quote from: polly_mer on August 27, 2020, 11:56:48 AM

Quote from: downer on August 27, 2020, 11:21:06 AM

Quote from: Parasaurolophus on August 27, 2020, 11:09:22 AM
Numbers are in today. Our enrollment is down... 0.8%.

That seems survivable -- though it might be that revenue is down more than that.

I am wondering whether schools that made drastic cuts in faculty pay and benefits because of fears about the future, and which are now doing pretty well, are planning to give that money back to faculty.

Even if enrollment is OK, all the extra expenses, lack of auxiliary revenue, and cuts to state funding means even an institution doing 'pretty well' on the enrollment side will come up overall short.

There's no scenario under which most faculty at most places end up with rollbacks on furloughs and pay cuts. That's ignoring the actual financial situation of which enrollment is only part.

A sobering reality for me is this. I'm at a place that has done relatively well in terms of enrollment and in terms of bringing in extramural funding, even during the Great Recession. Our enrollment is still doing just fine. So what is our reward for doing what we were supposed to be doing for as long as I can remember, at the behest of politicians and administrators?

---Since we were and are doing so well in terms of enrollment, external funding, and finding ways to control costs, we supposedly don't need as much state support that we've been getting. All they needed was an excuse to cut and they got one in COVID-19. We should have just been sucking all this time. Financially, we would have ended up in the exact same place.

Quote from: polly_mer on August 27, 2020, 04:05:03 PM

Quote from: lightning on August 27, 2020, 02:30:18 PM
A sobering reality for me is this. I'm at a place that has done relatively well in terms of enrollment and in terms of bringing in extramural funding, even during the Great Recession. Our enrollment is still doing just fine. So what is our reward for doing what we were supposed to be doing for as long as I can remember, at the behest of politicians and administrators?

---Since we were and are doing so well in terms of enrollment, external funding, and finding ways to control costs, we supposedly don't need as much state support that we've been getting. All they needed was an excuse to cut and they got one in COVID-19. We should have just been sucking all this time. Financially, we would have ended up in the exact same place.

Is the enrollment a high percentage of full pay folks (or international or out of state) or has it changed to be the same enrollment, but with less money coming in per person?  A lot of places will be short this year even with the same number of students because an in-state student pays so much less than international.

Is the enrollment that's constant in overall numbers still divided among the same programs?  Or, are the expensive-to-deliver programs growing while the programs that cost far less to deliver losing enrollment? I watched a provost almost cry when he realized we were losing almost $500/course/nursing student.  Yep, our nursing program was always full to the point that we rejected applicants every year, but English is so much cheaper to deliver and yet we only had about one English major per year.

What kind of external funding? Overhead on research may have already been too little to cover the additional costs of doing research, let alone the additional costs related to anything COVID.  I wish Daniel_von_Flanagan was still here with the soapbox on how frequently externally funded research actually costs the university because it doesn't cover all the costs.

What percentage of your institution's revenue was from auxiliary services?  Just because the faculty individually are doing wonderful things doesn't mean the 20-40% of the overall budget revenue from the auxiliary services is easy to replace when the campus goes virtual or is even just substantially less populated.

Faculty are necessary to run the institution, but faculty alone are insufficient to keep the institution in the black.

This is easy. N/A on most everything you mentioned but since you asked: differential tuition/fees for more expensive-to-run programs. No pathetic Super-Dinky types of tuition discounts that boost numbers and lower revenue--that's just plain dumb, and I still can't believe some colleges still do that. Grants from the feds of the military/homeland security/DoD/State Dept. variety in addition to the usual NIH/NSF, and contracts with private companies, all of which are large enough that some of the F/A trickles back down, too .

The cut was in state appropriations. We were completely blindsided, over the summer. Yeah, we're in the red, now. But we were in the black before the state decided to cut out part of our budget, using COVID-19 as cover. They were justifying it, in part, with predicted enrollment declines and lower tax revenues. They were wrong on the model, but the damage is already done. The money is gone. Now we have a bunch of students, whose needs need to be met, and not enough resources to teach them. Fortunately/unfortunately we will use many of the grants that clock in at 7 figures to create soft money positions and infrastructure, which will indirectly make up for the shortfall. But that's exactly why we lost state appropriations--politicians know we find ways to compensate--administrators know that too. And we should just stop it, because what are we really funding here . . . . read on.

As for "auxiliary" expenses that you mention, heh. I've never liked how portions of our "auxiliary" expenses have been outsourced to private companies and separate non-profit entities who are allowed to operate on our campus and even use some of our resources (buildings, incidental manpower like custodial services/security/parking enforcement/police--oh, wait, a lot of that's been outsourced, too--, etc.) to help run their private enterprise on our campuses, like the food court and portions of student housing, and even athletics who supposedly have their own separate budget and their secretive fundraising arms. But over time, I began to see the wisdom in how they are separated out from the academics. But it's weird what happened. Usually when a business outsources, it's not only to save costs, but it's to focus on the core mission of the enterprise and protect it. In the our case, when we began shedding auxiliary costs through outsourcing (and additionally, automation and IT solutions), instead of focusing on teaching and research, we started investing in new mission creep pet projects (centers, buildings, institutes, silicon valley wannabe incubators/tech transfer, shady curricular-private sector partnership programs, assessment innovation programs, civic partnership spaces, collaboration spaces, you name it we did it) that have a tangential relationship to teaching and research. And they all came with the requisite administrivia positions and lines re-assigned for those positions. They certainly sound cool, but I honestly have little idea what value they bring, other than to spin their wheels, make press releases, and hold meetings and events with captive audiences. I would like nothing more than to see a stake driven through the heart of all the bu****it projects that have been created over the last decade, but those are the raison d'etre for the expanded administrivia class of the last decade.

You're right Polly_mer, great faculty teaching and research alone does not make a viable business model for a university. But when an administriva class is created who then create non-academic endeavors that suck at the lifeblood of the academic enterprise, then yeah, you're totally right. But you seriously need to ask the question: why does the administrivia class and their raison d'etre pet projects need to exist in the first place? Or to inject some interduality, what value do these centers, buildings, institutes, silicon valley wannabe incubators/tech transfer, assessment innovation programs, shady curricular-private sector partnership programs, civic partnership spaces, collaboration spaces (and their requisite administrators) bring to your rural Wisconsin citizens?

Name five. I'll wait.

What dog do you think I have in this fight?  I'm against most of what UW-Madison does and you want me to defend similar administrative tech stuff for your university? 

OK, but only because I've spent this week on recruiting for my current employer.

1) The family farm has transformed via technology to the point that two people can really make it run.  The collaboration spaces and civic engagement spaces, especially those bring together people from a broad region, allow rapid exchange of ideas to the people who need them. College degree programs don't keep up with technology changes and relying on what  Dad did twenty years ago is the fast way to go broke and often get hit with environmental charges.  Supporting a new community of practice is a much more valuable service than classes that would be recognizable to Grandad.

2) The technology incubators are a way to let new people try out things in the world instead of the classroom.  The industries don't exist yet to hire anyone, but incubators bring together the resources and the hard-working intellects to add to brand-new human knowledge in areas that are rapidly expanding.  The young adults from the dying rural areas can participate in building a future that could save the rural areas by making more choices available through technology.  Yes, that means we may 'lose' a generation of young people as they live elsewhere, but we may gain much more than we lose ten to fifteen years from now when many more jobs can be done from 'anywhere'.

3) The new buildings are more energy efficient, ADA compliant, use newer materials and methods, and are physically safer.  Having more people have access to the meeting places with the power brokers helps everyone.  The rural folks can then send a wider variety of representatives from the community instead of the same people who are always the representatives. Better energy efficiency helps make prices lower for the far flung people who have to invest more heavily in transportation to do anything.  New building methods/materials being tried by people with the money to redo, delay, redo, and retry means the methods become more common and cheaper during the rarer cases of getting to build new in the rural community.

4) Having sufficient people to wrangle the large bureaucracy means the rural communities can get experienced administrators as the good folks opt for a simpler life.  Don't underestimate the value of a great administrator who can promote processes and written consistent policies, especially with office technology.  The modernization in a small place can be very rapid when the lack was knowledge of tools that have become dirt cheap...in large part because of those big bureaucracies elsewhere that have been investing in the office tools for two decades.

5) Assessment innovation programs coupled with the public-private partnerships lets someone else do the expensive trial and error phase.  However, if anything of value comes from the efforts, then the rural folks can join during the expansion phase for much less money and other investment.  The rural areas are dying and need new ideas.  Spreading the cost by having entities that acquire their own funds with some tax money spent is a far better technique than every small rural town doing the experiments on their own with direct, much smaller funding.

6) Big science as done in centers that bring together researchers with various disciplines to work on the big problems together as teams of experts who also mentors some newcomers is how the big problems will be ameliorated.  The single PI atop a pyramid of novices still in training is a terrible model for addressing the important societal problems that are most pressing to the rural folks.  Anyone who cares about actually addressing climate concerns should applaud a center that has many experts and sufficient resources to have regular communication channels to the decision makers.  You don't send the scientists to the government once in a while; you need the glad-handing, relationship builders who can lay the foundation and educate in the necessary terms to be ready with the new funding and laws as necessary.

If one really buys into the idea of the university of serving the people of the state, the most service to the state is outside of the classroom or individual faculty members with their small focused research groups

Quote from: polly_mer on August 27, 2020, 08:45:47 PM

If one really buys into the idea of the university of serving the people of the state, the most service to the state is outside of the classroom or individual faculty members with their small focused research groups

You can usually count on Poly to be the enthusiastic promoter of dystopian ideas. Obviously, teaching and learning are unimportant parts of a universities mission and they should mostly focus on throwing money at sketchy partnerships with private companies who are mostly interested in not having to make their own investments.

I don't think Poly is saying that you shouldn't teach students involved with these "incubators" or "centers" some (and maybe a lot of!) writing, engineering/math/coding finance/econ/business and so forth (including potentially the basics if almost any field) . Its more about providing a way for students and faculty a way to more readily interact with business, government, and other disciplines besides one's home discipline.  Poly can speak for herself, but I think this isn't an "either/or" situation though obviously there's always budget triage and a setting of priorities that are related to that triage.

 

Quote from: Ruralguy on August 28, 2020, 07:50:16 AM
I don't think Poly is saying that you shouldn't teach students involved with these "incubators" or "centers" some (and maybe a lot of!) writing, engineering/math/coding finance/econ/business and so forth (including potentially the basics if almost any field) . Its more about providing a way for students and faculty a way to more readily interact with business, government, and other disciplines besides one's home discipline.  Poly can speak for herself, but I think this isn't an "either/or" situation though obviously there's always budget triage and a setting of priorities that are related to that triage.

Right, there's nothing new about the idea that universities serve the surrounding community in ways that go beyond just training people for jobs. The part that is a problem is the idea that "the most service to the state is outside of the classroom or individual faculty members with their small focused research groups." That's a recipe for exactly what has happened, which is that universities are increasingly becoming hollowed out. It is a recipe for more and more centers and institutes and less and less money to hire faculty and teach students.

A lot of this depends on the school.  For an R1, institutes and centers are used to woo top faculty and their students, post docs, etc.. At a SLAC like mine, these centers tend to be window dressing, but occassionally they can be helpful in attracting faculty and students.
Also, in any setting they can be political nightmares because they involve multiple disciplines, departments and other offices around the college or University.

We are about flat, slightly up depending on melt. Our transfer enrollment is a bit down, but our freshman class is huge, and if we can retain them it will be very good for our near-term outlook. Our housing is full (we gave everyone single rooms at the double rate) and overflowing into a nearby hotel.

We've finished the first week of classes but people keep coming.  I've been asked to teach another OL class online, second 8 weeks; it's already half-filled.

Our semester starts after Labor Day. Right now we've got ~ 10% of students who would normally pay room and board declaring they will be attending remotely. So already we've lost a chunk of auxiliary revenue that is nearly half of our average annual net revenue. Add to that the $1-2 million in one-off costs associated with Covid-19 mitigation measures, and we'll be in deficit despite spending more than usual from the endowment.

We're down by a lot, but it's almost entirely our own fault.

Our dumb#$% senior administration freaked out back in May about low enrollments, and cancelled massive amounts of course sections for the Fall term. And then come August, most all of the remaining classes filled to capacity, and we were left with a massive student demand for classes that were no longer available.

So, all of our remaining classes are at full capacity (or even overloaded), but our overall number of sections is way down because our senior administration cut those sections out before Fall registration even began.

Idiots.

Quote from: Aster on September 03, 2020, 08:27:41 AM
We're down by a lot, but it's almost entirely our own fault.

Our dumb#$% senior administration freaked out back in May about low enrollments, and cancelled massive amounts of course sections for the Fall term. And then come August, most all of the remaining classes filled to capacity, and we were left with a massive student demand for classes that were no longer available.

So, all of our remaining classes are at full capacity (or even overloaded), but our overall number of sections is way down because our senior administration cut those sections out before Fall registration even began.

Idiots.

Wow.

Ours just told each department to come up with a plan for which sections to cut if enrollments fell by x%, y%, and z%, and happily they held off on actually cancelling sections until the reg period.

Quote from: Aster on September 03, 2020, 08:27:41 AM
We're down by a lot, but it's almost entirely our own fault.

Our dumb#$% senior administration freaked out back in May about low enrollments, and cancelled massive amounts of course sections for the Fall term. And then come August, most all of the remaining classes filled to capacity, and we were left with a massive student demand for classes that were no longer available.

So, all of our remaining classes are at full capacity (or even overloaded), but our overall number of sections is way down because our senior administration cut those sections out before Fall registration even began.

Idiots.

We were supposed to cut seats in the "Basketweaving for non-basketweavers" courses to save money on TA positions.  The dean asked for ways to save, then department said "if you insist we can cut classes", and we were prepared to take a huge hit in enrollment.  But the staff member in charge of posting courses never got the email.  No classes got cut!  Now, those classes are all full.  The dean is upset that we need TAs (TAs cost money!), but happy that the classes are full (yay for tuition money!).  It's a mess.

So maybe a lot of my institution's students ended up enrolling at your institution, because yours still had open seats. I guess that's a win for Higher Education.

Quote from: Aster on September 03, 2020, 05:17:06 PM
So maybe a lot of my institution's students ended up enrolling at your institution, because yours still had open seats. I guess that's a win for Higher Education.

Well, they aren't coming to my place, because we did something similar and now have no seats. The wave of deaths/retirements/compassionate leaves among the faculty at the end of the summer are compounding the problem. Requests for us to teach overloads are mounting. (That's actually a good deal for administration, which is one reason that I usually refuse to do it.) Meetings are going to be grim affairs for the near future.

Quote from: dr_codex on September 03, 2020, 05:42:33 PM

Quote from: Aster on September 03, 2020, 05:17:06 PM
So maybe a lot of my institution's students ended up enrolling at your institution, because yours still had open seats. I guess that's a win for Higher Education.

Well, they aren't coming to my place, because we did something similar and now have no seats. The wave of deaths/retirements/compassionate leaves among the faculty at the end of the summer are compounding the problem. Requests for us to teach overloads are mounting. (That's actually a good deal for administration, which is one reason that I usually refuse to do it.) Meetings are going to be grim affairs for the near future.

The upper division and majors lower division classes have open seats.  Most of the registered students in the non-majors are seniors from other majors fulfilling a graduation requirement.  I think a lot of our second years are either taking a year off or transferred to the local community college (which is bursting at the seams with new students).  No one wants to pay full price for all online classes when you can get better quality online classes for cheaper at the cc.

Quote from: the_geneticist on September 04, 2020, 10:06:05 AM

Quote from: dr_codex on September 03, 2020, 05:42:33 PM

Quote from: Aster on September 03, 2020, 05:17:06 PM
So maybe a lot of my institution's students ended up enrolling at your institution, because yours still had open seats. I guess that's a win for Higher Education.

Well, they aren't coming to my place, because we did something similar and now have no seats. The wave of deaths/retirements/compassionate leaves among the faculty at the end of the summer are compounding the problem. Requests for us to teach overloads are mounting. (That's actually a good deal for administration, which is one reason that I usually refuse to do it.) Meetings are going to be grim affairs for the near future.

The upper division and majors lower division classes have open seats.  Most of the registered students in the non-majors are seniors from other majors fulfilling a graduation requirement.  I think a lot of our second years are either taking a year off or transferred to the local community college (which is bursting at the seams with new students).  No one wants to pay full price for all online classes when you can get better quality online classes for cheaper at the cc.

I would expect a lot of students to be heading for the cheapest possible alternative this year, since pricier schools simply can't offer much of the "college experience" for the premium price. 

Wonder how many students are going to end up taking gap years--even though there's not much that makes doing that attractive either.

Quote from: apl68 on September 04, 2020, 10:59:17 AM

Quote from: the_geneticist on September 04, 2020, 10:06:05 AM

Quote from: dr_codex on September 03, 2020, 05:42:33 PM

Quote from: Aster on September 03, 2020, 05:17:06 PM
So maybe a lot of my institution's students ended up enrolling at your institution, because yours still had open seats. I guess that's a win for Higher Education.

Well, they aren't coming to my place, because we did something similar and now have no seats. The wave of deaths/retirements/compassionate leaves among the faculty at the end of the summer are compounding the problem. Requests for us to teach overloads are mounting. (That's actually a good deal for administration, which is one reason that I usually refuse to do it.) Meetings are going to be grim affairs for the near future.

The upper division and majors lower division classes have open seats.  Most of the registered students in the non-majors are seniors from other majors fulfilling a graduation requirement.  I think a lot of our second years are either taking a year off or transferred to the local community college (which is bursting at the seams with new students).  No one wants to pay full price for all online classes when you can get better quality online classes for cheaper at the cc.

I would expect a lot of students to be heading for the cheapest possible alternative this year, since pricier schools simply can't offer much of the "college experience" for the premium price. 

Wonder how many students are going to end up taking gap years--even though there's not much that makes doing that attractive either.

As I've posted elsewhere, in any other circumstance I'd expect a mass rush to take gap years. But if you cannot travel, and cannot work, the prospect looks much dimmer.

Online CC programs do look good, especially when compared to cobbled together "distance learning experiences".

My medium sized CC in the NE is down in enrollment by 15%.

CCs only look good for students planning to enroll at institutions that will transfer credit in.  The elite institutions don't do transfer credit in general.  Thus, a year at home with one's personal projects might be very appealing over credits that won't transfer or expensive online courses with minimal peer-to-peer networking.

Students who follow the news may also be wary of how many good-online-courses will actually transfer in useful ways.  Getting credits for 'all' the elective slots while still missing gen ed requirements can be suboptimal.

There are more non-elites than elites. My school will transfer on a tremendous amount of credit (amount to at least half).  Probably not at all useful for juniors or seniors, but definitely for some freshmen and sophomores.

Quote from: Ruralguy on September 05, 2020, 02:10:57 PM
There are more non-elites than elites. My school will transfer on a tremendous amount of credit (amount to at least half).  Probably not at all useful for juniors or seniors, but definitely for some freshmen and sophomores.

We've discussed lost credits on these fora a few months ago.

The past couple years have had a steady stream of reports on students losing more than a semester's worth of credit by transferring.

The past couple years have also had a steady stream of reports of entering college students who had so much credit from AP and dual enrollment that they start as sophomores at the non-elite institutions.  Our local high school tends to have a list of dozens of people who finish high school with an associate's degree.

Quote from: Ruralguy on September 05, 2020, 02:10:57 PM
There are more non-elites than elites. My school will transfer on a tremendous amount of credit (amount to at least half).  Probably not at all useful for juniors or seniors, but definitely for some freshmen and sophomores.

Ditto at my institution. We require 120 credits to graduate and will allow students to transfer in up to 60. Based on prior posts, it sounds like Ruralguy and I work at very similar institutions.

Quote from: TreadingLife on September 05, 2020, 05:50:05 PM

Quote from: Ruralguy on September 05, 2020, 02:10:57 PM
There are more non-elites than elites. My school will transfer on a tremendous amount of credit (amount to at least half).  Probably not at all useful for juniors or seniors, but definitely for some freshmen and sophomores.

Ditto at my institution. We require 120 credits to graduate and will allow students to transfer in up to 60. Based on prior posts, it sounds like Ruralguy and I work at very similar institutions.

The question then becomes what happens to those credits.  I remember many 'fun' conversations that turned out students had 6-8 semesters left after transferring 60 credits because the credits didn't count for the major or all the required gen eds. 

There were some really sad stories of students who had taken practically nothing for their majors at the CC and thus had eight semesters left of part-time attendance to work through the prerequisites in order with no option to go full-time with federal financial aid covering extra electives.

Quote from: polly_mer on September 05, 2020, 01:57:34 PM
CCs only look good for students planning to enroll at institutions that will transfer credit in.  The elite institutions don't do transfer credit in general.  Thus, a year at home with one's personal projects might be very appealing over credits that won't transfer or expensive online courses with minimal peer-to-peer networking.

Students who follow the news may also be wary of how many good-online-courses will actually transfer in useful ways.  Getting credits for 'all' the elective slots while still missing gen ed requirements can be suboptimal.

My campus has a lot of transfers from our local cc.  The advising between both is excellent.  There is a "transfer agreement" between the in-state community colleges and the big state universities.
The issue is that who ever designed the "transfer agreement" made the HUGE assumption that students would take classes at exactly one cc, and complete entire course series before transferring to one university.  Nope, it's nowhere near that neat & tidy.  The cc are close enough together that students will take classes at 3 (or 4, or more!) different colleges.  We have the additional complication of quarters vs semesters too.  And students run into issues if/when they change majors.

I wonder how many students are going to struggle in semesters to come because the prerequisite classes they took last semester were such a mess that they were unable to master the material, despite passing the classes and gaining the credits.

Quote from: apl68 on September 08, 2020, 10:30:54 AM
I wonder how many students are going to struggle in semesters to come because the prerequisite classes they took last semester were such a mess that they were unable to master the material, despite passing the classes and gaining the credits.

That's only a problem for majors where knowledge and skills matter.  Anyone just checking boxes for a credential won't immediately feel the effect.

Quote from: polly_mer on September 08, 2020, 11:27:48 AM

Quote from: apl68 on September 08, 2020, 10:30:54 AM
I wonder how many students are going to struggle in semesters to come because the prerequisite classes they took last semester were such a mess that they were unable to master the material, despite passing the classes and gaining the credits.

That's only a problem for majors where knowledge and skills matter. Anyone just checking boxes for a credential won't immediately feel the effect.

Although I have a weird hunch that it's those majors where "knowledge and skills matter" that will have been more rigorous about making sure about what students had to accomplish after the covid lockdown than other courses, some of which have been discussed here, where profs essentially passed everyone becuase of the "trauma" of the situation.

Quote from: marshwiggle on September 08, 2020, 11:39:19 AM

Quote from: polly_mer on September 08, 2020, 11:27:48 AM

Quote from: apl68 on September 08, 2020, 10:30:54 AM
I wonder how many students are going to struggle in semesters to come because the prerequisite classes they took last semester were such a mess that they were unable to master the material, despite passing the classes and gaining the credits.

That's only a problem for majors where knowledge and skills matter. Anyone just checking boxes for a credential won't immediately feel the effect.

Although I have a weird hunch that it's those majors where "knowledge and skills matter" that will have been more rigorous about making sure about what students had to accomplish after the covid lockdown than other courses, some of which have been discussed here, where profs essentially passed everyone becuase of the "trauma" of the situation.

Could be.

But I'm in one of those "box checking" courses fields, and I had an extremely high percentage of F's and DNF's. Online course rates, which shouldn't really be a surprise, even though I extended every deadline. All of those students are repeating the course.

On the other hand, in what you guys call the 'knowledge and skills matter" courses, confirmed cheating rates were sky-high. I'd wager that at least some of those students are taking up seats in their follow-on courses as we speak. Should be interesting if that has an effect on their progress this semester.

Quote from: dr_codex on September 09, 2020, 01:46:13 PM

On the other hand, in what you guys call the 'knowledge and skills matter" courses, confirmed cheating rates were sky-high. I'd wager that at least some of those students are taking up seats in their follow-on courses as we speak. Should be interesting if that has an effect on their progress this semester.

Cheating rates are often high for the intro courses.  The 'fun' starts at the actual weedout course where students either up their cheating game or get told to find another major.

Alma Mater says that they now have the highest enrollment in 30 years.  They also say that they currently have over an 80% retention rate, and over a 60% graduation in four years rate.  Thanks to better than expected enrollment this semester, they have kept their COVID-related deficit down to under $1 million.

I briefly visited the campus over the weekend.  Students appear to be taking the use of masks seriously.

Quote from: apl68 on September 28, 2020, 08:35:02 AM
Alma Mater says that they now have the highest enrollment in 30 years.  They also say that they currently have over an 80% retention rate, and over a 60% graduation in four years rate.  Thanks to better than expected enrollment this semester, they have kept their COVID-related deficit down to under $1 million.

I briefly visited the campus over the weekend.  Students appear to be taking the use of masks seriously.

This will be interesting to see if there are some institutions that actually come out of covid stronger, by virtue of having adapted well and creatively, so that they have risen above their less-pro-active competitors in ways that provide an ongoing advantage.

Funny enough, we were just told we had record enrollment for the incoming class. OF course, we are also told that the the "sky is still falling" financially though, enrollments or not, because covid19.

Quote from: marshwiggle on September 28, 2020, 08:45:12 AM

Quote from: apl68 on September 28, 2020, 08:35:02 AM
Alma Mater says that they now have the highest enrollment in 30 years.  They also say that they currently have over an 80% retention rate, and over a 60% graduation in four years rate.  Thanks to better than expected enrollment this semester, they have kept their COVID-related deficit down to under $1 million.

I briefly visited the campus over the weekend.  Students appear to be taking the use of masks seriously.

This will be interesting to see if there are some institutions that actually come out of covid stronger, by virtue of having adapted well and creatively, so that they have risen above their less-pro-active competitors in ways that provide an ongoing advantage.

Personally I suspect that Alma Mater has been picking up students from Texas who have left Liberty University in disgust.  There's something to be said for having university leaders who don't act stupid.

Quote from: apl68 on September 28, 2020, 09:37:20 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on September 28, 2020, 08:45:12 AM

Quote from: apl68 on September 28, 2020, 08:35:02 AM
Alma Mater says that they now have the highest enrollment in 30 years.  They also say that they currently have over an 80% retention rate, and over a 60% graduation in four years rate.  Thanks to better than expected enrollment this semester, they have kept their COVID-related deficit down to under $1 million.

I briefly visited the campus over the weekend.  Students appear to be taking the use of masks seriously.

This will be interesting to see if there are some institutions that actually come out of covid stronger, by virtue of having adapted well and creatively, so that they have risen above their less-pro-active competitors in ways that provide an ongoing advantage.

Personally I suspect that Alma Mater has been picking up students from Texas who have left Liberty University in disgust.  There's something to be said for having university leaders who don't act stupid.

That belongs on a T shirt, but it would be awkward to wear to work.