Periodic Review Report to the Commission on Higher Education Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools June 1, 2005 Bernard M
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Enrollment Plans and ProjectionsAs Baruch looks towards the next five years, there are challenges ahead. Our enrollment plans will be heavily tied to concerns about the budget, student demographics, space, faculty resources, admissions criteria, as well as retention and graduation rates. We also need to develop a broader enrollment strategy for the College that captures clear views on the relative size of the three Schools in the future. Do we want to continue to try to grow graduate enrollments? Do we want the enrollments in the Zicklin School of Business to shrink and the enrollments in the Weissman School and the School of Public Affairs to increase? Do we want to continue to move towards a more traditional enrollment that is full-time day or do we want more part-time evening? These issues will be reviewed as part of the strategic planning process. For the purposes of the projections, we used the following assumptions, each of which will be explained more fully below: We cannot continue to enroll more full-time undergraduate students without additional resources and overall enrollment will be held stable at 15,500 per year The mix of students will change slightly with graduate students growing at about 2% a year, with corresponding decreases at the undergraduate level Admissions standards will remain at current levels. We will seek additional tuition revenue by increasing summer enrollments and expanding intersession offerings. Enrollment planning, particularly at the undergraduate level, has been greatly affected by the change in student demographics. Baruch’s undergraduates are now primarily full-time day students, not part-time evening. Undergraduates now register for a higher average credit load than their predecessors. The departmental course schedules have been adjusting to meet these shifts. In addition, there has been an unexpected but welcome trend of increased applications and admissions from outside the New York City area. We are currently considering how to attract additional nonresident enrollments, due to the higher tuition levels they pay. Currently, our plans are to maintain overall enrollment at a flat level of 15,500 per year. However, in order to generate more revenue we are planning to increase graduate enrollment by 270 over the next five years. This could generate about $500,000 in additional revenue per year and would be accomplished with increases of about 2% a year. Undergraduate enrollment would be reduced by the appropriate amount each year, largely through adjustments to the number of transfer students taken, to meet our overall enrollment goals. The growth we are projecting at the graduate level would be spread across all three schools. One challenge we face is the declining number of international students enrolling in graduate programs in the United States. Despite this obstacle, we expect to be able to increase graduate enrollment in the three schools without compromising the current admission standards. Baruch’s academic profile for both our freshmen and transfer classes is the highest in CUNY. There is a concern that if we continue to raise standards we may disenfranchise our traditional population. Therefore, there are no plans to raise admissions standards any further at this time. A related concern that we are carefully monitoring is the decline in the number of blacks who are enrolled at the College. Much of the decline can be attributed to the decline in the number of black students graduating from New York City high schools, and the increased competition we face from other colleges for these students. Nevertheless, we believe that we can do more to attract these students to Baruch College. As a result, we are increasing outreach to high schools with large black populations and have already hosted very successful College for A Day programs to acquaint students from these schools with College life in general and Baruch in particular. We are also holding on-site admissions days at local high schools to help students complete their admissions and financial aid applications and provide them with an immediate admissions decision. The President recently hosted a dinner for a group of High School Principals to build stronger relationships with schools that have high minority enrollments. Table 10 below provides a full 5-year enrollment projection based on the previously articulated assumptions.  Summer School and IntersessionSummer school presents another challenge for the College. Our Summer school enrollment is usually equivalent to at least 55% of our fall enrollment, a very high proportion. However, the enrollment did decline this past summer. This can be attributed mainly to the continued shift away from nontraditional part time evening students to the traditional full time day students. Although the College would like to increase the summer school enrollment to offset budget shortfalls, there is no clear evidence that this is a viable solution. We do recruit and enroll a large number of non-degree students during the summer session. For the most part these are students who live in the metropolitan area and attend other Colleges during the academic year. We have tried to recruit non-degree students from out of state who want to spend the summer in New York City. However, it has been difficult to compete with the private colleges who can offer them reduced housing costs during the summer months. We are attempting to increase summer enrollments by encouraging high school students looking to get a jump on College to enroll in summer courses. We have added special courses to meet their needs. In addition, we are also encouraging newly-admitted transfer students to begin their Baruch coursework in the summer, rather than waiting until the fall. The CUNY calendar features a month-long break between the fall and spring semesters, generally referred to as intersession. In the past we have used that period to offer mostly graduate level courses. We are currently working with the University to develop a way to offer additional tuition-bearing undergraduate courses during the intersession, without jeopardizing student financial aid. This promises to provide the opportunity for additional revenue growth, as well as help students move more quickly to degree completion. Directory: facultyhandbook -> documents documents -> Joe Collison documents -> Baruch College Strategic Plan 2005-2010 documents -> Summary of cue, 2006-2007 Download 1.07 Mb. Share with your friends:
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