Finally, the preliminary fall enrollment report is ready. The verdict is in. FAMU now has fewer students attending and being admitted and retained. Of course, we already knew that.In the spring of ’05, there were 5,528 students who were classified as sophomores. However, less than 92% of these 5,528 students progressed to the upper division (436 juniors) in the fall of 2005.
Today there are 3,554 students enrolled as sophomores, how many of these sophomores will successfully progress to the upper division in the fall of 2007? Since state funding is based on the number of students at the lower, upper and graduate divisions it is important that students progress through the university. Lower division students garner less state support than upper division students. Given FAMU's poor track record, lately, of having its students progress through the university it is very likely that our operating budget has suffered from this dismal attrition rate.
What is the university’s plan to recruit students that can successfully matriculate? At the same, what is the plan for providing opportunities for students who need assistance to be successful? Many believe that FAMU should not be the equivalent of a glorified high school. Click here to view the fall 2006 preliminary report and the spring 2005 final report.
Now that the university has hired a vice president for enrollment and recruitment, a director of admissions, and a new recruitment officer while paying these individual top dollars, when will we see some results? We understand that the recruitment of National Achievement Finalists/Scholars is no longer a goal or mission of the university, but alumni, our corporate partners and faculty would like to see more of these students enrolling in FAMU.
wow. 400ish juniors and 5000ish sophmores. Fantastic.
ReplyDeleteDaRattler: Spelling tip on passage #1, last line: "knew" instead of "new." "Knew" is the past tense of know, which is what is needed in the statement. Other than this little slip-up, good looking out.
ReplyDelete400 juniors...5000 sophmores...are you serious? I think it would be a good idea for FAMU to hire counselors as opposed to having faculty advise these students once a semester to really get in and on them and give them the intensive support and encouragement in the degree completion. this news is staggering and very upsetting. very very upsetting. These students need to know and feel that the school(faculty and staff) cares about them...as opposed to the prevalent nasty dispostions and nonchalance. Yes true indeed these students are adults but they need guidance and that extra support...youd be amazed at how far that goes.
ReplyDelete6:18pm --- thanks!
ReplyDeleteYou got Vinnie June and Debbie Austing hiring all of these associate, assistant and directors left and right, how can this be happening?
ReplyDeleteThese folks are supposed to be experts. Why are we loosing students at the junior and above levels? Why are they bottle-necked at the sophomore level? With this great recruitment plan by Debbie and the restructuring of student life by Vinnie, we should have expect more than a 92% attrition rate?
I don't know why you people are trying to pin this enrollment crisis on Dr. Castell Bryant. She is improving the student body and the faculty hired to teach these students.
ReplyDeleteSome of you all need to lighten-up and give the conspiracy theories a break.
Before Castell, FAMU was in trouble and probably on the verge of loosing SACS' accreditation, our NCAA sports, and state funding. Under Dr. Bryant, FAMU is doing great!
Enrollment is down because Bryant gutted the recruitment program in 2005. Plain and simple. She cannot escape blame on that issue. FAMU's is losing state dollars for enrollment because of Bryant's actions.
ReplyDeleteFAMU was not in danger of losing its accreditation before Bryant came. Walter Mercer, Larry Robinson, and the others who had secured FAMU's reaffirmation during previous cycles had matters under control.
Bryant did make a good decision to hire Nelson Townsend as AD. He has helped to get athletics back on the right track. This is one area in which things have actually improved under Bryant's watch.
FAMU needs a president who will get the job done on recruitment and the SACS reaffirmation process. Bryant has turned back the clock on progress in those two areas.
Someone would have to delve into the numbers to really tell what is going on. Some percentage of students are not making the grade, some students are transferring out, some students don't cross the credit-hour threshold until the spring of their third year.
ReplyDeleteIs a breakdown available?
Part of the issue is the degree of preparedness that students have when they come to college. Many of our students unfortunately are coming from average to mediocre high schools. Few have good study skills and some don't have strong academics. Therefore many freshmen come to FAMU and take a lighter load there first couple years to get acclimated. They are taking 12 and 13 credit hours per semester. Even though they may be in their 2nd year at FAMU, many still do not have the credit hours to be officially sophomores and this becomes a waterfall effect. This correlates with the fact that on average, FAMU students are probably taking an extra year to graduate beyond what is ascribed to their particular major.
ReplyDeleteThe university is taking steps to address this. One of the initiatives that was discussed was centralizing academic support on the campus in the old cafeteria. All of the tutors and learning labs (math, foreign languages, writing lab, etc) would be concentrated there. Students could get one stop help.
Furthermore, I believe students still have to pass a test to move on to upper level classes. If they don't pass, I think they stay in a holding pattern in lower level courses.
However, academic advisement is still a problem on the campus. It seems that faculty and others are giving students poor advice, are not accessible when students need advice. This needs to change.
There really is nothing new here. This phenomenon has existed on the campus quite a few years. The magnitude may be greater (don't know the statistics from the last 10-15 years, which would help to put it into perspective. I know for a fact, it was something Dr. Gainous also expressed concern about.
the freshman and sophomore spring semesters should be the time where the schol should hone in and pay attention to students academic success. if students are coming back for their sophmore years maybe we can curb those numbers by really focusing in on them their and if its hard for students to get over 2nd year hump...maybe a scholarship could be provided to help them get to their junior year.
ReplyDeletemaybe students are taking lighter loads because they cant afford 15-18 hours per credit hour?
just like how the career center has workshop series...maybe academic support should have more publicized workshop series on how to study, test preparation and time management, etc.
and a centralized academic support office at the old caf would serve to be a great idea...there students can be encouraged to really focus in on the english an math grades so they could opt out of taking the CLAST exams or really know how to study for it...hopefully it could take away from a student's "set time"
Within the first few months of her reign, Castell Bryant shut down all scholarship commitments to new students. The reason she so proudly gave the Faculty Senate at its Spring Retreat was because more money was offered than was available for scholarships. She also vigorously defended her actions and said that in no way were enrollments going to fall.
ReplyDeleteWhat people tried to explain to her was that a well-established pattern exists, whereby only a fraction of the students who are admitted to FAMU (or any university) actually enroll. This is why you can offer more students scholarships than you have money for. Her approach is like opening a restaurant but not buying any food to cook. Her flawed logic was that if you take no risk, you cannot lose money. However, probably any of the SBI 8 could have told her, without risk, there is also no profit!
Now we have fewer students entering and those that do enroll have lower SATs, ACTs, and GPAs. The reason student progression is faltering is because a large percentage of the students she admitted have no business being in a university, and faculty are striving to maintain the academic rigor that makes a FAMU degree meaningful.
Faculty work hard to nurture students, and many students are giving it their best, but some are just not ready. But it's easier for her and her administration to point fingers at faculty than to admit they screwed up. I bet if she set the Rattlers up to play Ohio State this weekend, she'd blame the coaches for our loss!
The important thing is for us to not acquiesce to her angry finger-pointing and punitive retributions, and to pray and work for a real academic leader in the new president!
Please do not mention Fred Gainous name on this site as a person trying to solve or address anything meaningful.
ReplyDeleteWhat he didn't have the balls to complete (by his puppet masters) Casthell is now wearing the pants and doing a muck-a-dee, muck job of it.
Between these two clueless presidents FAMU is now on life support and the only being that can save FAMU is God through divine intervention.
Looks like this:
ReplyDelete(1) FAMU admits underprepared, undermotivated students to keep its numbers high. These do not know how to do college work. They struggle through two years, then many drop out.
(2) There are lots of seniors because students keep staying seniors year after year, inflating the count. We need a count of 4th year, 5th year, 6th year, etc., to see what is going on.
(3) Unless the new academic advisement is better than what General Studies has traditionally offered, it will not solve much.
(4) TCC does a fine job with academic support for underprepared students. FAMU needs to learn from what TCC does.
(5) It is possible that many students need to live at home and attend a nearby community college their first two years, till they mature enough to do college work. Then come to FAMU.
(6) The huge Boomer Echo generation should provide FAMU with huge numbers of potential applicants. Tens of millions of extra college-age students will arrive over the next few years. Let's plan for them.
We can admit better-prepared students and not lose our enrollment numbers. If we plan. If we plan.
11:43, you don't know what you're talking about. Plain & simple (like you, obviously, are.)Do you read? Do you listen? Do you critique? Do you analyze? Do you interpret? Do you do your research before you make asine judgment calls? ANSWER: No. No. No. No. No. & No. There, you have it.
ReplyDeleteI often contribute to this blog, and I believe that this is perhaps the first time in in a very long time that the dialogue has been without the (traditional) cursing. It's a great group of comments, thoughtful commentaries and pretty good stuff here today. This is how it should be. We can get our points across without being evil and just plain ugly. Let's keep up this good work. More than FAMUans come here and read this stuff. Thanks to Everyone who's contributed!
ReplyDeleteLike so many others, poster 11/16/2006 11:40 AM does not seem to be able to admit that those who could not see anything good in the Gainous administration bear a whole lot of responsibility for where we are now. The Board of Trustees must also bear a huge portion of responsibility for the denise of this fine institution, as well as the voters who supported the people who made the decisions. I'm afraid we are the prime example of what happens when you politicize higher education. Perhaps the backlash at the national level will quell a little of the arrogance in our statehouse, and educators can once again give direction and leadership to the state's universities.
ReplyDeleteI agree. The BOT bears much responsibility for the reins it does not pull on CVB's actions. I'm afraid that when a new president comes to FAMU, the BOT will be mean and nasty to the person just because CVB is no longer there. They will try and "veto" any action that the president wishes to make, unlike the actions that they now do not engage in. We all can say what we want about Barney Bishop, the former, outspoken trustee, but we all know that for the most part, he was right on the money about how CVB conducts business. Now, I'm not saying that all BB said was right and true, and we know that he thought himself overseer of (what he saw as) a bunch of incompetents. I guarantee you that when CVB leaves the post, a boatload of misdeeds and misbehavior will be uncovered.
ReplyDeleteAmen that!
ReplyDeleteWho are you people? Do you really love FAMU?
ReplyDeleteDr. Castell Vaughn Bryant is only trying to right years of mismanagement and financial irresponsibility.
When Dr. Bryant is done, FAMU will be at the top of her game.
well there is a book coming out folks call fixin' famu by one barbara thompson...cant wait to get it! morale is low...so low a b ook is being published about it!...castHELL must go!
ReplyDeleteBryant is not fixing FAMU, she ran up a $10M deficit and caused enrollment to drop by over 2,000.
ReplyDelete6:23,
ReplyDelete"You People" are FAMUans and others who not only "care about FAMU" but care equally about FAMU's reputation. There's a distinct difference in the two, just in case--and obviously--you did not know. Apparently, you have had not one iota of association with the university in a very long time; therwise you wouldn't be so quick to post such a warrantless remark. You're probably one of these folks who just attend the football games and think that's the high end of the university. I can assure you, as a faculty member there for the past fifteen years, there are lows at the university as well as those highs that you so obviously are speaking of. Read, my friend, and get with the program.