siuDE.com

Issue date: 3/6/08 Section: Campus

Editor's Note: This is the second in a five-part series on enrollment. Part one focused on the effect of the university's enrollment crisis, while part two explores the possible causes of the problem. The series will run in the next three consecutive Thursday editions.

Don Rice said he knows one sure way to keep student fees from rising - increase enrollment.

Rice, interim provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs, is one of many concerned about the university's declining enrollment. Student levels peaked at about 25,000 students in 1991, but declined to 20,983 by fall 2007.

"Our attention is riveted to this whole issue because it affects so much of what goes on, everything from the quality of education you get and the resources you have available, to our ability to pay our bills," Rice said.

The problem affects student fees, building maintenance, staff salaries and the livelihood of Carbondale businesses, and its causes are many.

Retention

Victoria Valle, assistant vice chancellor for enrollment management, said people often talk about enrollment as if it only refers to recruitment, but student retention presents an equal concern.

"We have a retention problem here, and it really hurts us when our students leave," Valle said.

From fall 2006 to fall 2007, the university lost 671 of 2,222 first-time, full-time freshmen.

According to the university's tuition and fees estimator, each of those students would have paid $3,454.65 per semester in tuition and fees, meaning the university lost more than $2.3 million for one semester.

SIU President Glenn Poshard said some students did not receive strong backgrounds in math and science in high school and found it difficult to cope with college-level classes.

Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Larry Dietz said the Center for Academic Success, which helps students who do not meet the university's admission standards, provided some support.

But he said the Supplemental Instruction program, which provides peer assistance for 17 classes, does not have funding to expand. He said the program could benefit from development, because it drastically helped students cope with hard-to-understand classes.

Poshard said retention may be the most important facet of the university's enrollment concerns.

"I think if we can turn the corner on retention, we can turn the corner on enrollment," Poshard said.

History

"I don't think you can look at these kinds of issues without having some sort of historical reference," Poshard said. "The thing that we have to remember is how this university got started."

SIUC began as a small, 3,000-student teacher's college and showed no inclination to expand until Delyte Morris became president in 1948. Morris took advantage of the GI Bill and other opportunities to transform the university into a major research institution with, at its peak, about 25,000 students, Poshard said.

More than 60 percent of the university's buildings were constructed between 1951 and 1971, according to university records. The rapid expansion left the institution with a serious task to fill buildings, Poshard said.

"You can't go back on that decision now," he said. "You can't decide, 'Oh, we're going to let our undergraduate base go down to 15,000 kids,' for instance, and still be able to maintain our mission."

At the beginning of fall 2007, University Housing filled about 85 percent of its capacity, said coordinator Crystal Bouhl. Wright Hall, built in 1965, closed this year to account for some of the empty space.

"It just kind of makes good business sense to consolidate all of those vacancies into one building," she said.

Poshard said the number of decaying buildings on campus has created additional concern. He said university administrators are mindful of the problem.

"We're not producing the new kinds of buildings and renovations of the old buildings that draw students," Poshard said.

The facilities maintenance fee, charged to all students who have come to the university since August 2007, brought in $1.9 million its first year. The fee is proposed to increase $48 next year to a total of $198 per semester for full-time students.

Poshard has proposed using up to $100 million in bonds - which would be paid back over about 20 years with money from the fee - to fix the decaying structures.

"We owe the kids better buildings, and we're going to do that," he said.

Other problems

A variety of other factors contribute to lagging enrollment, Poshard said.

Competition is tough. There were only about 127,000 Illinois high school graduates to go around in the 2005-2006 school year, according to the Illinois State Board of Education. With some of those headed to careers, community colleges or other universities, the battle to recruit more students becomes more urgent, Poshard said.

The growth of community colleges and decline in transfer students has added to the concerns, he said.

"We haven't been out there on those campuses promoting SIU," Poshard said.

He said the recent addition of nine community college outreach centers should help increase those numbers.

Valle said administrators would discuss offering in-state tuition to some students from bordering counties in neighboring states. Institutions such as Murray State University and Southeast Missouri State University have lured students from southern Illinois by offering in-state tuition rates, Valle said.

The Faculty Senate discussed the possibility at its Feb. 19 meeting, and Peggy Stockdale, the organization's president, said the university would need to gain 400 out-of-state students to make the measure profitable.

Rice said students can rest assured that all of the university's administrators would work toward a solution, but it would not happen overnight.

"It is not just enrollment for dollars. It is trying to work with an enrollment strategy of admissions and also retention that allows us to be the best education for the students," he said.

Allison Petty can be reached at

536-3311 ext. 259 or

allison.petty@siu.edu.

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