Tag Archives: enrollment

Are enrollment plans realistic, or just admins padding their resumes with student money?

By | |
Comments Off on Are enrollment plans realistic, or just admins padding their resumes with student money?

Ryan Nguyen has a good report in the Daily Emerald, here:

But the plan to build new residence halls does not entirely square with the findings of a residence hall feasibility study from September 2011. The report, meant to inform UO’s future housing projects, states that the university should “not demolish its existing debt-free housing, but rather maintain it and renovate it.” That conclusion is based off of the costs of adding additional housing and the subsequent changes to room rates.

“We are experiencing a significant student demand for a greater percentage/mix of larger rooms and rooms with in-room private bathrooms,” Housing Director Michael Griffel said in a statement when asked about the feasibility study. “There is also demand for lower cost, smaller double style rooms and triple occupancy rooms. The combination of legacy residence halls (Justice Bean, Earl, Carson, Riley) and new residence halls with some triple room occupancy spaces, currently meets and is projected to meet future student demand.”

The word in Johnson Hall is that these new dorms and renovations are being done now because they’ll form the core of the “Athletic Village” for the 2021 IAFF championship – paid for by higher housing costs for a generation of UO undergrads. The state’s Higher Education Coordinating Commission is skeptical as well. Their thorough October 2019 analysis of future enrollment is here. It’s not good news.

As Nguyen’s story goes on to report, the administration’s latest silver bullet to increase enrollment – now that we’ve seen millions in subsidies for the Ducks don’t deliver new students – is guaranteed tuition. This has been tried at many universities, with varying success. Several have since abandoned it. If it works, it will be only a short-run boost, as other universities will copy it.

But that’s all the JH leadership needs – a few promising looking initiatives so they can pad their resumes for the next job.

Newly promoted Vice President pleased with President’s leadership

By | |
2 Comments

As he should be. Diane Dietz has the report from VP for Everything Roger Thompson, on UO’s class of 2020 here. It’s mostly good news, and for once there’s no BS about how students come to UO for the winning Duck football team and our big-time sports party-school brand. And take note, freshmen. You’re the class of 2020, not 2021, so take 4 classes, not 3.

UO and OSU enrollment

By | | Uncategorized
2 Comments
11/15/2013: Comprehensive story in the RG, comparing UO and OSU, here:

The plan is to grow the Corvallis campus to 28,000 students, up by about 75 students; increase enrollment at OSU’s Bend campus to 5,000 students, up from 936; grow the online student population to about 7,000 students; and increase the Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport from a handful of students today to 500 in the future. 

At the UO, meanwhile, Thompson said he doesn’t know when the university hopes to grow again. 

“I don’t know that that’s any where on the horizon,” Thompson said. “There’s so many things the university needs to sort out before we think about growth — that’s quite a way off.”

For once there’s nothing about the wonderful influence of Duck Football on enrollment and how it justifies more athletics subsidies. Perhaps that’s because UO’s admissions yield rate, the % of admitted students that actually enroll, has fallen from 36% in 2004 to 26% in 2012. Makes you wonder how the administration is going to justify this year’s bowl game junkets?

And don’t miss this Steve Duin post on enrollment of undocumented immigrant Oregon high school graduates at Oregon universities, with in-state tuition. UO had the most, but that was only 12.

Updated: Good news for higher ed, better news for UO faculty

By | | Uncategorized
7 Comments
7/26/2013: The NYT reports on a dip in higher ed enrollment:

College enrollment fell 2 percent in 2012-13, the first significant decline since the 1990s, but nearly all of that drop hit for-profit and community colleges; now, signs point to 2013-14 being the year when traditional four-year, nonprofit colleges begin a contraction that will last for several years.

But it’s a poorly researched scare story with no data, focusing on some small southern catholic college where enrollment fell 30% this year. The latest NCES projections are for a 10% increase in enrollment at 4-year public institutions over the next 8 years. Oregon’s demographics are even more favorable than the national ones, and of course our governor has hired Rudy Crew, a change agent with a national reputation for a short attention span, Nancy Golden, a respected, experienced Oregon leader with a long-term proven track record to implement his 40/40/20 plan which calls for roughly doubling college enrollment in Oregon

So, the worry here at UO is how we will handle this increased growth. Enrollment is already 4% above the academic plan, admissions standards are increasing, and Forbes Magazine just rated us as the 65th best college in the U.S. (Anon commenter fact-check: among public universities, that is. Overall, UO is #217, OSU is #304.) I checked their weighting scheme, it’s all about costs, student employment outcomes, and satisfaction with teaching. Football and beach volleyball count for 0%.

In unrelated news, it turns out the President of the National Academy of Arts and Sciences, which I’d always assumed was the arts and letters version of the NAS, is a fraud who has lied about having a PhD for years, and gets paid ~$700K a year. From the Boston Globe, via the wicked Margaret Soltan:

CAMBRIDGE — Every fall, Leslie Cohen Berlowitz, president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, oversees the induction of hundreds of the brightest scholars, artists, and leaders into the prestigious organization, one of the nation’s oldest and most respected honorary societies, whose membership includes more than 250 Nobel laureates and 60 Pulitzer Prize winners. … 

And the NAAS has hired a PR flack for her:

Berlowitz, a 69-year-old New York native, declined repeated requests for interviews over the past two weeks and refused to meet with a reporter who stopped by the academy Monday morning. The academy referred calls to an outside public relations consultant, Ray Howell, who declined to answer specific questions but issued a general statement Monday evening: 

“Neither the academy nor President Berlowitz is going to respond to subjective, interpretive, and gossipy allegations from former employees and unnamed sources,” Howell said in the statement. “Nor are they going to respond to personal questions that are irrelevant, do not belong in the public domain and, frankly, smack of sexism.” 

For comparison, the AAU only paid the distinguished Dr. Bob Berdahl $550K a year. The State Higher Education Executive Officers Association is probably only paying Dr. Pernsteiner $300K or so, and the UO Foundation’s Paul Weinhold only got $340K, last time they released the data, which was a few years back.

Spend a little time on guidestar.org and you will be amazed at how many higher ed “non-profits” pay salaries like these. Or wait for Carl Malamud of public.resource.org to get the IRS to release the digitized data, and for enterprising bloggers to start analyzing it.

Update: The Globe is now reporting on Berlowitz’s resignation and scandalous golden parachute deal:

Under the terms of her resignation, the academy said Berlowitz will receive no severance, but will get a one-time $475,000 payment for retirement benefits, deferred compensation, and accrued vacation under her contract, something the office of Attorney General Martha Coakley pledged Thursday to investigate. Berlowitz will also receive supplemental health insurance for five years at a cost of no more than $3,500 a year.

US graduate enrollment drops (updated)

By | | Uncategorized
12 Comments

9/28/2012. Even while numbers taking the GRE are up. NYT story here. Interim Provost Bean’s academic plan calls for increasing UO’s graduate students from 15% to 19% of enrollment. Since percentage calculations can be problematic for our interim provost, we got these from a Dog:

Here are some old numbers from a post last year:

9/24/2011: This graph from UO’s latest report to OUS on our “academic plan” certainly raises the question. See this earlier post for background.

Since 2001 undergraduate enrollment has increased 36%, graduate enrollment by less than 10%, and the number of tenure track faculty by less than 10%.


 

 Here’s the data on the number of tenure track faculty– pretty flat with a recent small uptick. Here’s the data on enrollment. We have 24,300 this year.

 To the left is the number of students (fall enrollments) per tenure track faculty. For 2011, it will be ~35.

And here’s the latest IPEDS data on where the money is going, from the Delta Project. 2009 means the 2009-2010 academic year, President Lariviere’s first year in charge. 1.3% increase in instructional spending and a 9.3% increase on institutional support – meaning central administrative costs, aka Johnson Hall.

From their data dictionary: “General administrative services, executive management, legal and fiscal operations, public relations and central operations for physical operation.” I wonder what the 2010-2011 data will look like?

student faculty ratio

By | | Uncategorized
1 Comment

2/20/2012: There’s a lot of misinformation about student-faculty ratios floating around. If you look at the number of students per tenure track faculty, you get this:

All the data from UO institutional research. It’s ugly, so Jim Bean has been counting NTTFs, which makes us look much prettier. I’ve got nothing but respect for NTTFs. But while denial may work for US News – where UO reports a student-faculty ratio of 20 – it is probably not the way to stay in the AAU.

A research university or a teaching college?

By | | Uncategorized
9 Comments
9/24/2011: This graph from UO’s latest report to OUS on our “academic plan” certainly raises the question. See this earlier post for background.

Since 2001 undergraduate enrollment has increased 36%, graduate enrollment by less than 10%, and the number of tenure track faculty by less than 10%.


 

 Here’s the data on the number of tenure track faculty – pretty flat with a recent small uptick. Here’s the data on enrollment. We have 24,300 this year.

 To the left is the number of students (fall enrollments) per tenure track faculty. For 2011, it will be ~35.

And here’s the latest IPEDS data on where the money is going, from the Delta Project. 2009 means the 2009-2010 academic year, President Lariviere’s first year in charge. 1.3% increase in instructional spending and a 9.3% increase on institutional support – meaning central administrative costs, aka Johnson Hall.

From their data dictionary: “General administrative services, executive management, legal and fiscal operations, public relations and central operations for physical operation.” I wonder what the 2010-2011 data will look like?
The good news is that the faculty did well getting grants – research spending was up 8.2% over 2008. Go here for background and sources. Revenue? Tuition up, state support down. (Auxiliary services means dorms, food service, parking.)

UO runs out of dorm rooms

By | | Uncategorized
Comments Off on UO runs out of dorm rooms

8/8/2010: From Greg Bolt in the RG. If I understand it right more students than expected are coming and fewer than expected are dropping their dorm room contracts. Seems like housing is handling it much better than in 2008, when they shuffled the overflow across the river. This time they get rooms in privately owned apartment buildings near campus – very expensive rooms, however. The new dorm under construction behind Law will house 450 more students, I guess not until 2011 though. Next question, where will we teach them? I’ve had several classes with more students than desks recently. If the university can’t provide the necessary classrooms and office space either, maybe we should rent these from the private sector as well?