Posted by: pmp6nl
« on: January 14, 2008, 10:34:31 PM »It is a tough issue to approach, especially figuring out why it happened and what to do about it.
Enrollment isn't the only measure of UND. But it's a measure, and the downward trends at the university must be reversed.
Why? Because North Dakota State University's enrollment has passed or is very likely to pass UND's?
No. Bragging rights aren't the issue here. Programming is the issue: UND has the buildings and faculty to accommodate more students. But the numbers keep going down instead of up, and the lost revenue from three years of enrollment declines may take its toll on UND's next annual budget, to quote Herald staff writer Joseph Marks' Dec. 15 story (Enrollment drop may lead to belt tightening, Page 1A).
That - not NDSU's growth - is the really troubling news.
UND should gear up to make sure the decline is reversed.
Colleges and universities are funny things: not businesses, not charities, not hospitals. . . . So, traditional measures of organizational health don't always apply.
Consider enrollment - specifically, growing enrollment. Businesses always want more customers, so colleges always want more students. Right?
Wrong. Harvard University and other selective schools could triple their enrollments, but they choose not to. Instead, they keep enrollments stable at what they consider to be an optimum size, and grow their endowments instead.
Harvard now has so much money per student that undergraduates whose families make less than $60,000 a year can attend almost for free.
In fact, there are colleges that have grown too fast, some higher-education analysts say. When enrollment growth outruns revenue and endowment growth, students can wind up in crowded and shabby facilities - and that school's reputation will suffer over time.
In UND's case, the university could accommodate up to about 15,000 students, including 12,500 on campus and 2,500 through distance learning, administrators have said in the past.
One of President Charles Kupchella's early goals was to have 14,000 students enrolled by 2005. That always seemed about right: Enough to take full advantage of the campus and its facilities, but not so much that classrooms would feel jammed.
If enrollment had reached 14,000 and stabilized, UND then could have chosen either to build more buildings and grow even more, or hold firm on the numbers and pull in more dollars per student. Those are the choices a university likes to make.
But enrollment never reached 14,000. Instead, it hit about 13,200; and rather than steadying out at that point, it started to slip. The first-day spring enrollment now stands at 11,141, a 1.4 percent drop compared to this time last year.
UND officials are keenly aware of these trends and are working hard to reverse them. That work should continue and be made an even higher priority, if possible. Enrollments do fluctuate and occasional dips must be expected. But when those dips reach the point that administrators start fretting about cutbacks, then the time for explanations has passed and the time for strong action has come.
The finalists to be UND's next president will be visiting campus this month; the first - Robert Kelley, dean of health sciences at the University of Wyoming - makes his first public appearances today.
The need to grow UND's enrollment should be a core topic of the interviews as the search committee continues its work.
I'm a fiscal conservative and a social classical liberal/jeffersonian.
LIE berals.
LIE.
DO YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE?
Those damned LIEberals.
It's probably more males than females, since the entirety of our educational system from K-12 up is geared towards women.