Admissions growth will be limited

Minimal growth at the undergraduate level will most likely remain constant to keep university standards high.

Vice President for Institutional Research and Enrollment Management Dr. Paul Jones said the number of freshman students enrolled for 2005 will remain about the same as 2004.

“This year is not much of a change from last year, so we’ll hopefully enroll somewhere between the 917 that we enrolled in 2004 and 950,” Jones said. “Some of our limitations include that all of our freshman are required to live on campus. We can’t exceed our capacity there.”

Last year was the first year in this decade that saw a decrease in the freshman population. According to the Web site for The Office of Institutional Research, from the fall of 2000 to the fall of 2003, freshman enrollment jumped from 710 to 1010. The decrease in 2004 may be the result of the new living requirements and higher standards for enrollment.

Admissions Specialist Marlene Lovejoy said the student limit will, in the end, have a positive impact on the school.

“As far as the quality of students admitted within the new freshman residency requirements, I believe we are getting students with higher scores and GPAs, which is great for our standings in comparison with other colleges,” Lovejoy said. “Also, since we are limiting the number of freshman due to housing constraints, competition to be admitted has become fierce.”

Jones does point out that incoming freshmen are not the only way the school can grow. Growth can also occur by increasing the number of graduate and transfer students.

“For sometime, it will be a challenge for us to grow very much, or the growth will be very modest,” Jones said. “Most of the growth won’t necessarily come at the freshman level. Perhaps the growth will take place as it relates to graduate, off campus kinds of growth.”

As the school tries to find ways to grow, student quality is still very important at all levels. New requirements are to be implemented for those entering in the fall.

“I think that we have wanted to try and increase the transfer numbers, but this year is the first year that new admissions standards went into place for transfer students to insure that we have a high quality student body,” Jones said. “Because of that, there are a significant number of students who are not eligible to enroll that would have probably enrolled otherwise.”

The new standards raise the grade point average for transfer students from 2.0 to 2.3.

Another effect of the higher standards is increased competition for students.

“When you increase the quality like we have, you are recruiting a tier of students that is more and more competitive,” Jones said. “Students have many more options than they may have had before. So that makes it a little bit more challenging.”

This increase in competition has also had a direct affect on the number of minority students attending GC&SU. Between 2000 and 2003, the percent of black incoming freshmen decreased every year. In 2000, blacks made up 7.3 percent of the incoming freshman class. In 2003, the number was down to 3.6 percent.

Jones said the problem is a limited pool of funds to attract minority students, not a lack of effort in recruiting African Americans.

“Last year we admitted 17 percent more African American students, but unfortunately, we could not matriculate them,” Jones said. “Again, because the kind of students we are recruiting, particularly African American students are just outstanding and are being recruited by universities all over the country. Unfortunately, our scholarships are our greatest need. So we are not as competitive as we would like to be, but that is something we are working on. I think the future is bright for us to raise the kind of money we need.”

One positive aspect of GC&SU’s lack of growth is the ability to preserve the current student-faculty ratio.

“Another issue is trying to maintain a good student-faculty ratio, which we have now at fifteen to one and we want to maintain that,” Jones said. “It makes it a little challenging because by doing that you are obviously keeping yourself from growing.”

Will Finch, a pre-mass communication major, said he thinks that the student-teacher ratio should stay the same.

“I think it’s about the right size,” Finch said. “[The ratio] is one of the things that brought me to this school. I didn’t want to go anywhere that was too big. I kind of like that it is a small school.”

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Apr 15 2005. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry