The UNC Board of Governors is considering a new program that would give the General Administration more power over the growth and enrollment funding of UNC System schools.
The plan would reward institutions for retaining and graduating students, and restrict growth at schools that do not meet certain benchmarks in graduation and retention.
The idea, which is “still a proposal, would affect one portion of our funding – getting new money when we increase our enrollment,” Karen Helm, director of university planning and analysis, said.
If the proposal passes, UNCGA would tie performance measures to the enrollment projection process. This would mean that schools that GA views as “underperforming” could have restrictions put on the number of incoming freshman at the school.
The General Assembly has not finished defining the performance measures for the universities, but Helm said there would be seven or eight measures in the final plan. On the front burner are plans to relate to one-year retention rates of freshman and the number of undergraduate degrees awarded per 100 enrolled full-time equivalent students.
There are two components to the plan: restraints and rewards, Helm said. “If [N.C. State] doesn’t perform well, we’re not allowed to increase enrollment,” she said.
The restraints portion of the program involves three thresholds that a university must meet in order to expand its freshman class:
– University must have an 80 percent retention rate for its previous class of incoming freshmen
– University must meet or exceed its stated goals for improving retention rates
– University’s retention rates must be at or near the average for its peer institutions. “Our peer institutions tend to be large, land grant universities with a concentration of science and technical programs,” Helm said.
“N.C. State passed on all three of those retention measures, meaning that the General Administration would not put a restraint on our freshman enrollment for 2011-2012,” Helm said.
The proposed plan also calls for a rewards system in place for UNC System schools that exceed retention and graduation baselines.
In addition to more control over the size of its next freshman class, schools that exceed baselines could receive cash “rewards.” These rewards will be won by universities based on their graduation rates as compared to other UNC System schools and their peer institutions, though no official guidelines have been set.
It’s this reward system that led Chancellor Randy Woodson to call the new funding model plan “inspiring.”
“It shows they [UNC System] want to reward success. The ultimate goal with any university is that they graduate students. When you are trying to do that, it is a challenge to keep growing the freshman class each year, too,” Woodson said.
Even if the proposal passes, N.C. State will not be expanding its freshman class next year. Though the University met all of the performance measures attached to the current version of the funding plan, freshman enrollment will decrease slightly next year. This decision was made without regard to the proposed funding and enrollment changes, Woodson said.
“This has been a challenging time for funding, and we have had a lot of budget cuts,” Helm said. “Our undergraduate enrollment goal for next year is 4,400.” The UNCGA has yet to approve the number.
In 2010-2011, N.C. State enrolled 4,560 freshmen.
“It’s not a huge, dramatic difference; it’s just that the freshman class isn’t growing,” Woodson said.
Woodson said that the University won’t necessarily start shrinking; it just won’t continue to add more and more freshman each year. “There would have been no restrictions if we wanted to expand [the freshman class]. We are very successful now, and we want to remain that way.”
Rather than adding freshmen, the University wants enrollment numbers to increase in transfer students, graduate students and students who complete a course of study at community college and then enter N.C. State as upperclassmen.
The leveling off of freshmen will also make it less challenging to see to the needs of first- and second-year students, Helm said. “In general education courses that all freshman and sophomores have to take, it’s been hard to keep up with the growth. We don’t want to increase enroll and not have the resources to provide for the students we’ve admitted.”
Class sizes in graduate programs have not been a problem since he arrived at N.C. State, but he would not want class sizes to expand, said J.D. Mink, a graduate student in technical communication. Slowing freshmen enrollment will help reduce the chances of increased class size across the University.
Further, pulling the reins in on freshmen enrollment would “certainly help cut down on the [undergraduate] class sizes,” Mink said.
He recalled a freshman-level survey class he took at a university in another state that contained 1,000 students. “It was awful,” he said.
