Vol. 25 No. 1 September 2010

25th Anniversary Issue

Editor’s Note: With this issue, College Bound celebrates its 25th year of publication! Over the past two-and-a-half decades, CB has chronicled scores of changes in the college admissions and financial aid process for our readers in high school counseling and college admissions offices across the U.S. and in 40-plus nations.

 
Public U.'s Bursting at the Seams
As the U. Of Iowa opened it doors for the fall semester, administrators greeted the largest class in UI’s history--some 4,500 first-year students, 450 more than last year, 200 over its last record set in 2006.

As a result, UI hired more instructors for “high-demand” first-year classes, increased seminars by 30 percent, converted family housing back to a residence hall, leased a privately-owned apartment complex and arranged for reduced rates at other nearby complexes for transfer students.

Iowa is not alone. State universities across the country are reporting record enrollment as more high school seniors this fall turn to community colleges or nearby state institutions.

“More students than ever before are crowding Missouri colleges and university campuses,” reported OzarksFirst.com, a Missouri news service. At the U. of Missouri in Columbia, the freshman class was up nearly 10 percent from last year, totaling 6,160 freshmen. The university, in the midst of constructing new dorms, rented a dorm from nearby Stephens C.

At Southeast Missouri State, students were offered deferred admissions until spring 2011 if they were in need of housing. “We’re bursting at the seams down here,” said Ann Hayes, at the University News Bureau.

SUNY Campuses Appealing. For the 2010-2011 academic year, New York’s public colleges and universities also posted record application numbers. Onondaga Community C. expects enrollment to reach 12,575, over 2,000 more students than three years ago, according to The Post-Standard in Syracuse, New York.

Additionally, more Syracuse high school students are using the “Say Yes” program, which pays tuition for seniors at certain schools. The consequence is that SUNY colleges have become a more appealing option and, in turn, more selective. Base SAT scores have increased and colleges say they are looking for more academically prepared students, with demonstrated leadership and extracurricular activities.

Students at the State U. College at Geneseo, for example, one of most selective of the New York institutions, have an average SAT score of 1348, seven or eight AP classes and a 95 GPA, said Kristine Shay, director of admissions. Geneseo received 10,500 applications, admitted 3,400 students and enrolled 938 students. Geneseo is now competing with the state’s selective private colleges such as Cornell U., Colgate U. and Vassar C.

High Summer Enrollment. Elsewhere, students took courses over the summer to save money, reports nj.com. In New Jersey, colleges saw a sharp increase in summer enrollment, and some colleges and universities posted spikes of 10 percent and more, according to The Star-Ledger’s look at two- and four-year institutions.

“The main factor driving admissions is the economy,” said Mary Fennessy, director of registration and records at Ocean County C., which had a 10 percent increase this summer. “When the economy is poor, enrollment goes up.”

Among the 20 colleges and universities studied by the Star-Ledger, 15 reported that summer enrollment and the number of credits taken by each student went up significantly. New Jersey’s two-year colleges noted the largest enrollment spikes. For example, Passaic County Community C. was up 10 percent; Hudson County Community C. was up 11 percent and Union County C. was up nearly 17 percent. Rutgers U., the state’s largest university, recorded a 4 percent increase at the New Brunswick and Newark campuses.

CUNY Swamped, Sets First-Ever Deadline. The City U. of New York, swamped with applications, imposed its first definite deadline and a wait list for fall 2010. An unprecedented number of students applied to the university by April, with the school receiving more than 70,000 applications for fall 2010. That is higher than the total amount of the applications for the whole of 2009. Among other factors, the admission process has been strained by the 64 percent admission rate from the New York City School system. So CUNY implemented a May 8th deadline for first-year students and June 2nd for transfers. At least 2,460 students sent in applications after the deadline and were put on a wait list. Late applicants in need of remedial teaching were then directed to the CUNY Start program which provides students with rigorous pre-college math, reading and writing and college advisement.

Enrollment Up with New Tuition Program. Eastern Michigan U.’s “0,0,0” tuition initiative led to higher enrollment for summer and fall 2010, the university reported. Enrollment for fall 2010 rose by over 6 percent and was up nearly 9 percent for summer 2010. Eastern Michigan U. had the smallest tuition increase in the state in 2009, and then it implemented the “0,0,0” initiative which froze tuition, fees and room and board for 2010. Eastern is one of only three Michigan schools that did not raise tuition this year.

Enrollment Offsets Budget Cuts at State U.’s in Georgia. Universities in Georgia reported record enrollments this fall. Officials at North Georgia College & State U., for example, welcomed more students than expected, a 7 percent increase over last year to 5,853 students, according to the gainesvilletimes.com. The school received 1,000 more applications from freshmen than in 2009. “The increase in enrollment should help offset some of the budget reductions we anticipate coming this year,” said Kate Maine, director of public relations.

Colleges at 110 Percent Capacity in West Virginia. Potomac State C. began the school year with a record enrollment, 1,859 students, up 4 percent over last fall, according to the newstribune.info. While there were more than 700 freshmen, there were more returning students as well. Temporary housing was set up in residence halls. “The college is at 110 percent capacity,” said Bill Letrent, dean of student affairs.

More Students Want To Go To UCSC. UC Santa Cruz received 3,718 “Intent to Register” statements from prospective first-year students this summer, up about 5 percent from last year, said the Santa Cruz Sentinel. Because of budget cuts, the school reduced enrollment last year. This year, UCSC would like to enroll 3,200 students, but it may need to include all the students who submitted the intent statements.

According to admission officials, the applicant pool had strong academics overall and more minority students. Underrepresented students grew from nearly 26 percent last year to almost 29 percent. About 29 percent of students came from low-income backgrounds.

More Transfers from CCs to Universities. Reflecting another trend, more state universities in Virginia and Maryland are drawing transfers from local community colleges, changing the way many students receive four-year degrees, according to a recent article in The Washington Post.

The number of community college transfers increased 36 percent in Maryland and 34 percent in Virginia between 2000 and 2008, higher than the overall college enrollment growth in these states. Transfer students to the U. of Virginia doubled in the same time period to 280 students per year, or 10 percent of an average junior class. Transfers increased 17 percent at the U. of Maryland, 27 percent at George Mason U. and 53 percent at Towson U. Each of these schools accepts over 1,000 transfers annually.

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THE COUNSELOR'S CORNER

THE GREENE REPORT

Looking Back Over the Decades
Howard Greene has been a CB contributor since its first issue 25 years ago. Here, CB asks him, "What are the primary changes you've seen in college admissions over the last few decades?"

WITH THE START OF ANOTHER ADMISSIONS CYCLE looking backwards in time gives us a perspective on both the present and the future issues likely to occur. (Although we could halt right here to ask, "What cycle are you talking about?" There is no such thing anymore in the admissions world!)

However, taking advantage of 40 years in the college admissions and counseling profession, I presume to offer observations on some of the milestones that have occurred in the passage from high school to higher education and what may be the defining issues and patterns in the near future. Always the optimist, I believe great advances have been made and these will continue unabated. Underneath history, there is always more history to be explored.

While a good deal of hand-wringing over the affordability and accessibility for all qualified learners has been the central theme, who would have thought a mere generation ago that a majority of the most expensive, exclusive colleges and universities would now provide financial support to anywhere from 40 to 75 percent of their student body. From many generations of minimal socio-economic, let alone racial and ethnic representation in their student bodies, the great public and private colleges today are comprised of a wide spectrum of students on these counts.

The social history of America has played a profound role in the social advancement of our ever increasing diverse population. As an admissions officer in the late 60's at Princeton University, I experienced first-hand the intentional, aggressive efforts, in tandem with our peer institutions, to reach out to racially and ethnically grossly underrepresented individuals. The historic all- male colleges acknowledged, at long last, that talented young women were deprived of the opportunity young men had to take advantage of their great faculties and resources. The result: Consider that the two most recent appointments to the Supreme Court of the United States are women. One with Hispanic roots and the other from a Jewish tradition were educated at Princeton. The third latest appointee to the court, an outstanding student from an Italian-American family, also enrolled in Princeton on a scholarship. And let's not overlook one of the most extraordinary historical outcomes in the post-civil rights movements: the First Lady who presides in the White House is an African-American who also attended Princeton on a scholarship.

And Princeton was not alone in these changes. The force of historical events will, I believe, continue to keep open the doors of our vast and diverse higher educational system. Consider the fact that enrollment in all forms of higher education expanded from 14.8 million in 1998 to 18.6 in 2008, an increase of 26 percent in just one decade! A review of the demographic composition of a range of institutions today confirms the continuing commitment that educational leaders have made to keep the gates of opportunity open to all. Yes, these are hard times economically for both individuals and institutions. But I do not foresee a retrenchment of financial aid for those who qualify for admission into the many levels of higher educational programs.

One cannot imagine elected officials at the state and federal levels advocating a shrinking of financial aid programs. Instead, the press now is on university administrators to review all programs and facilities to determine which are essential to the learning process. In hard times, priorities have to be considered with a cold eye, and this is occurring on most if not all campuses today. The arms race for the top students by means of luxurious facilities and faddish programs will abate as resources have to be redirected. Exotic academic programs and unduly specialized research institutes that do not address the needs of students who are preparing for the challenges of the 21st century will be shed.

The challenges that lie ahead are daunting: declining endowments and constraints on resources, rising tuitions, greater numbers of applicants who qualify for financial aid, increasing competition for students from other nations. Nevertheless, the genius of the American educational system, from the first colleges in the colonial period whose primary purpose was the training of religious leaders, has been its agility to adapt to the changes in the larger environment. It has been and will continue to be both a reflection of our society and a significant factor in how our social, economic, political and cultural institutions continue to evolve.

Satchel Paige, the legendary pitcher who was not allowed to play in the major leagues until the age of 42 after many years of stardom in the Negro League, said, “Don’t look over your shoulder, something might be gaining on you.”

I counter this with the belief that looking back over four decades in the field, the opportunities that the universe of higher education have made available to individuals of all backgrounds, all ages, and both genders borders on the miraculous. And this should be kept in mind as educational leaders, admissions officers and school counselors continue to find the ways and means to deal with the many challenges in play.

Howard Greene is president of Howard Greene and Associates, based in Westport, Conn., and the author of several books on college admissions including his latest book, with Matthew Greene called College Grad Seeks Future, published by St. Martin’s. See www.howardgreeneassociates.com.

Minorities and College Enrollment. The Pew Research Center found that the sharp increase in college enrollment rates during the recession is mostly due to minority student enrollment surges. According to Pew’s study, “Minorities and the Recession-Era College Enrollment Boom,” first-year student enrollment at 6,100 institutions of higher education grew by 144,000 students from fall 2007 to fall 2008, a 6 percent increase that was the greatest in 40 years, and 75 percent of which is attributable to minority first-year enrollment spikes. Between 2007 and 2008, the beginning of the recession, first-year enrollment of Hispanic students went up 15 percent, 8 percent for African-Americans, 6 percent for Asians and 3 percent for white students.

Rural Students and Higher Education. A recent study from the American Education Research Association found that elite colleges enroll fewer “highly-qualified” students from rural areas than from cities and suburbs, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.

“We find that even holding constant academic achievement and expectations, socioeconomic traits, and financial-aid factors, rural students are as much as 2.5 times less likely to enroll in one of the U.S. News top-ranked institutions compared to non-ranked four-year institutions,” said the report.

However, being from a rural area does not inherently make students less likely to graduate from a prestigious institution of higher education.

The factors that contribute to rural students’ enrollment decisions are different from those affecting non-rural students. For instance, a higher GPA is much more likely to lead to college enrollment for rural students than for urban or suburban students, whereas socioeconomic status did not seem to affect rural students as much as it did students from other areas. In addition, among rural students, men had a higher probability of enrolling in prestigious schools than equally qualified women. 

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CURRICULUM CAPSULES

Brown U.’s New School of Engineering. Brown U. promoted its Division of Engineering to a School of Engineering in May. Last spring, the engineering program had 437 undergraduate students. It is the major in which the students in the Class of 2014 have shown the greatest interest.

"Today’s monumental scientific and societal challenges depend greatly upon engineering know-how for advances in biology, medicine, clean energy and nanotechnology,” said Ruth Simmons, president. For more information, go to http://news.brown.edu/pressreleases/2010/05/engineering.

U. of San Diego New Architecture Major. U. of San Diego just added a four-year bachelor’s degree in architecture within the College of Arts and Sciences, the university announced recently. The school continues to offer a minor in architecture, and now 20 students are planning on enrolling in the major in fall 2010. Students can focus on architecture, landscape architecture, interior design, urban design, urban planning, historic preservation and art and architectural history. “We are very excited to introduce our students to a major discipline and to train designers and visionaries of the 21st century,” said Can Bilsel, director of the architecture program.

New Communication School at Butler U. Butler U.’s sixth college, the College of Communication, opened this fall. Students can concentrate on communication sciences and disorders, journalism, organizational communication and leadership, critical cultural studies, strategic communication (such as public relations and advertising) or media production/recording industry studies.

Students will be trained to develop their ability to “critically analyze and synthesize human and mediated communication, and learn to speak, write and create responsible messages across dynamic communication contexts and media platforms.”

First Web Science Bachelor’s. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York established the country’s first undergraduate web science degree, the school recently announced.Students will explore web-related issues, such as security and privacy and development, in addition to information technology curriculums. According to Shirley Ann Jackson, president, students will help “usher in a new era of understanding and study of the web from its social and economic impacts to the evolution of data and the development of new web-based artificial intelligence.”

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STUDENT STATUS

College Ready? Maybe Not. As summer ended, several reports once again sounded the alarm about college readiness. A new College Board report released in August argued that U.S. students simply are not being educated well enough to compete with the rest of the world. The College Board Advocacy & Policy Center charged that the U.S. used to lead other countries in the rate of adults age 25-34 with postsecondary degrees, but now the U.S. ranks twelfth. The College Competition Agenda 2010 points to challenges facing the 50 states. Among its findings:

“College counseling programs are critical to building a college-going culture and helping students navigate the college admission process, particularly for first-generation college students. Yet public secondary school counselors spend just 22.8 percent of their time on postsecondary admission counseling: nationally, the student-to-counselor ratio is 467:1 when the maximum recommendation is 250:1.”

The report also noted that, “No state has a population of which at least 55 percent of its citizens have an associate degree or higher.”

Yet Higher Education Critical for Finding Post-Recession Jobs. Still another report argued that many Americans will not have the education or training needed to qualify for new jobs created in a post-recession economy, according to the Georgetown U. study which noted that by 2018, 63 percent of U.S. jobs will need workers with at least some higher education. Employers will need 22 million new workers, but if the rate of people obtaining postsecondary degrees does not increase, three million jobs will go unfilled. Other post-recession jobs will require 4.7 million workers with postsecondary certificates.

“America needs more workers with college degrees, certificates and industry certifications,” said Anthony P. Carnevale, the Center’s director. “If we don’t address this need now, millions of jobs could go offshore.”

Job growth will not reach pre-recession levels until 2015. In 2018, 75 to 90 percent of jobs in the following sectors will need postsecondary education of some kind: information services; private education services; government and public education services; financial services; professional and business services and healthcare services.

These industries will represent 40 percent of all jobs. About 90 percent of the jobs in four of the five most quickly growing occupations will need postsecondary schooling including healthcare professional and technical occupations, STEM occupations, community services and occupations in the arts and education.

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NEWS YOU CAN USE

July 1st Changes to U.S. Education Policy. As of July 1, federal student aid increased in amount and accessibility for college students under the 2010 Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act, said the U.S. Department of Education. The most significant modification is from the bank-based, Federal Family Education Loan program to a Direct Loan Program. In addition, students can receive bigger Pell Grants and more help relieving debt. See, www.studentaid.ed.gov.

College Orientations Expanding. While college orientation used to focus only on registering for courses and buying textbooks, many colleges today hope orientation can become a resource that will increase student success in college and decrease the number of problems they encounter, according to The Chicago Tribune. The U. of Massachusetts Amherst orientation is now two-and-a-half days long and has programming for parents. That’s up from one day to two in 2006.

Class Rankings Now Less Common in Ohio. Many Ohio high schools are eliminating class rankings, leading Ohio’s institutions of higher education to look more deeply at other parts of a student’s application, according to The Oxford Press. Tracey Carson, spokeswoman of the Mason City School District, said that getting rid of class rankings encourages colleges to look at transcripts, recommendations and personal statements. In fact, in the last ten years, the number of schools using class rankings has decreased “dramatically,” said Mabel Freeman, assistant vice president for undergraduate admissions at Ohio State U. As a result, OSU has begun to look more closely at GPA and the difficulty of courses that a student takes.

New Test Optional Policies. American U.’s test-optional pilot program will continue for the fall 2011 semester, the school announced this summer. Also, Marist C. joined the growing number of colleges with test optional admission policies for the incoming 2011 class.

Best Colleges for Your Money. Payscale.com recently calculated which schools have the best return on investment. The percentage is tallied by looking at the cost of attending the college and the predicted future income for a graduate of that school versus the income of a high school graduate. The site explained that this allows students to decide whether a university’s tuition is too high. The top ten schools, according to this calculation, are: MIT, California Institute of Technology, Harvard U., Harvey Mudd C., Dartmouth C., Stanford U., Princeton U., Yale U., U. of Notre Dame and U. of Pennsylvania.

MN Private Colleges Respond with More Aid. While the economic recession continues to impact families, Minnesota’s private colleges are struggling to provide more financial aid and keep tuition hikes at all time lows in order to maintain enrollment rates, according to the StarTribune.com. The Minnesota Private College Council agreed to the smallest tuition raises in 30 years for fall 2010, averaging nearly 5 percent across the 17 schools, following an almost 5 percent increase last year. Approximately 92 percent of these school’s students are given financial aid, and “on average our students end up paying about half of the full tuition price,” the council said.

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COLLEGE BOUND's Publisher/Editor: R. Craig Sautter, DePaul University; Chief Operating Officer: Sally Reed; Assistant Editor: Emma Schwartz; Illustration: Louis Coronel; Board of Advisors: Lisa Burnham, Edina High School, Minnesota; Claire D. Friedlander, Bedford (N.Y.) Central School District; Howard Greene and Matthew Greene, authors, The Greenes' Guides to Educational Planning Series; Frank C. Leana, Ph.D., educational counselor; M. Fredric Volkmann, Washington University in St. Louis; Mary Ann Willis, Bayside Academy (Daphne, Ala.).

In This Issue

25th Anniversary Issue

Feature Articles
-Public U.'s Bursting at the Seams

-Other Admission Trends

THE COUNSELOR'S
CORNER
-The Green Report

CURRICULUM
CAPSULES

STUDENT STATUS

NEWS YOU CAN USE

HAVE A GREAT NEW SCHOOL YEAR!

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