Enrollment continues to tumble
Yesterday the FAMUAN reported, for the second year in a row Florida A&M University has failed to meet its enrollment projection numbers its reported to the state.
Each year the state gives the University money according to its proposed enrollment projections. Since 2004, FAMU has failed to meet its project enrollment. In most cases, this means that the University would owe the state money for each student it was funded over the actual enrollment.
FAMU Students want to know, if the university ends up owing the state money, where will that money come from?
A drop in enrollment means, the will have to make substantial cuts in its budget if the state decides that the university owes it money. So much for the "alleged" surplus.
Earlier this semester the falling enrollment caused cuts in SGA's budget and forced them to electronically "pass the hat" to pay for the Cornell West's visit.
"There are cuts being made everywhere on campus and another drop in enrollment would be detrimental to this university," SGA VP Phillip Agnew told the FAMUAN.
As usual, interim president, Castell V. Bryant, was unavailbe to speak to the FAMUAN.
Also, the Tallahassee Democrat reported yesterday that with a looming deadline approaching for the Fall 2006 semester, only 2,400 high school seniors have applied to the University so far.
I wonder what the breakout is between in-state and out-of-state. I'm willing to bet most of the loss is on the out-of-state side.
ReplyDeleteThe lull was inevitable, but we can get our footing back by building on the positive things that are happening. The number of students who are interested in FAMU seems to be holding steady or growing, but I can say that out-of-state tuition is a major obstacle.
Our illustrious provost, Dr. Debra Austin, is going to present her recruitment plan at the next BOT meeting...in MARCH. That's too damn late. What I'm about to tell you is to not only hit the panic button but also pick up the phone and complain to some state legislators. According to FAMU's Office of Institutional Research the university had 1,451 first time in college students in 2005 and 2,001 students in 2004. Now keep in mind that we only have 2,400 applicants thus far. We would need dang near all of those applicants to be accepted to the university and actually choose to come here. That's a tall order. http://www.famu.edu/oir/Enrollment.html#4
ReplyDeleteIf you haven't already started to have heart problems, check this out, if you look at the FAMU fact book for 2003-2004 (but includes data from previous years) we had nearly 3 times as many applications as we do now. For instance during the Humphries years we had 7,881 in 2002, 7,611 in 2001, and 7,656 in 2000. Now we only have 2,400???!!! PLEASE, ALUMNI AND FACULTY WTFU!!! Our school is slowly dying because of gross incompetence at the highest levels. To make this even more sobering, in 2003 we were able to convert about 38% of applicants into actual enrolled students. Looking at the number of applicants we have now - that would come to 918 freshmen for Fall 2006. Let me say this again - 918 FRESHMEN FOR FALL 2006!!! ALUMNI AND FACULTY WTFU!!!
http://www.famu.edu/oir/FactBook.html (The data is under Table 1 - New Students Applied, Admitted, and Enrolled).