I think it could be also the image the UA is pushing heavily towards expansion and a diversity push with oos students while Auburn has largely retained its size and student body diversity makeup. From websites like Niche and others, what I found people say about Auburn was overwhelmingly the school attracts “White, rich, conservative” within the South (if you don’t believe me look at the link from Niche). UA pushes heavily to attract everyone from all backgrounds and races with merit scholarships, which has helped the overall positive shift from a troubled past of diversity to being more inclusive and accepting. At least what I can tell from Auburn is minority students do not have as positive feelings about Auburn as UA. Essentially, Auburn draws the more traditional students of the states and area (whites) while UA’s student body and administration is more accepting of minorities.
@CyclonesGrad I get the feeling that parents who graduated from out of state send their kids to Auburn moreso than Alabama, but I don’t know if that is peer pressure from co-workers or they are just uninformed about UA. I think a lot of it is that once a school is known to consistently send their graduates to a certain school more than any other, than kids that attend that high school have a narrow view and just go along with their peers.
I don’t necessarily think the parents are fighting back but the Auburn graduate parents that I know seem to push their love/creed of the university onto their children more than any school that I know. And yes you are correct, they always viewed their school as superior because in all honesty their reputation was much better than UA for a long time.
This decline in freshman in state enrollment is also striking given that UA has won four national championships in football since 2008, the peak year for in state freshman enrollment. Football is huge in Alabama so one would think that would have attracted more in state students. I think till UA raises its lower ACT and SAT percentile numbers, it will be hard to end its rep as being easier to get into than Auburn. I have known a lot of Auburn people who are convinced that anyone can get into UA. If UA did raise its standards to raise that lower percentile number, it would probably if temporarily significantly reduce both in state and minority enrollment. But long term, raising the standards could improve the in state rep and reverse this downturn in in state enrollment.
Very interesting, @UA2009.
Hard to know if specific schools send more kids to one university or the other, or whether or not any particular school is representative of other schools in the city or the state without poring over data from every high school (which to my knowledge isn’t available).
My son has a good friend at UA who attended a pricey private school in Huntsville, and the young woman who took us on our engineering tour back when he was in high school was from Huntsville. I think she said her parents were originally from another part of the country and worked at the Redstone Arsenal. Clearly they thought UA was just fine for their daughter, but they weren’t Auburn grads either. Her younger sister was transferring from Auburn to UA that fall too, FWIW.
I really suspect a lot of these choices are cultural.
UA has a lot of recruiters dedicated to the State of Alabama: http://gobama.ua.edu/states/alabama/.
Not sure about AU, as it’s harder to tell: http://www.auburn.edu/admissions/recruitment/alabama.html
For those not knowing AL geography, Auburn is very close to Montgomery. The AU-Montgomery campus has evolved over time but AU-M is not as major like UA System other campuses, but UA - UAB - UAH all have their own missions under one Board of Trustees (and each have their own President). The UA Board of Trustees made a mistake hiring in a UAB President to take out football at UAB, but they underestimated the fight to keep it, and then restored it (also they took the gamble that it wouldn’t affect the other sports in conference - to stay in the conference, they had to have football). That really hurt UAB for total student recruitment - football was out one year, and now back in to rebuilt. UAB would have gone to a post season conference bowl game had the plug not been pulled for football - and many of the great players were able to go to other football programs with their coaches assisting.
My neighbors (both Eng graduates of Vanderbilt) liked UA better than AU overall for their ME son - he ended up wanting to go to AU, and will graduate from there soon. Do not underestimate peer influence.
There are many ‘divided households’ in AL - most with UA/AU division. My dental hygienist has 3 AU supporters in her family and the rest of the family is UA - they cannot speak to each other on Iron Bowl day.
When H and I moved to AL in 1983, we enjoyed shopping on Iron Bowl Saturday afternoon because AL folk were watching the big football game. Now we are sucked in too.
I think Clemson and AU have a lot of similarities, while Clemson has a few traits like UA.
I also find it interesting that there are some families that have their student in a large public HS here, but then open up the wallet for a prestigious college. With us, we found that the money we spent on private HS paid off not only in some academic ways, but the in-state college scholarships repaid our investment.
One’s education can never be taken away from them.
@UA2009 Very long time to change perception considering long history of AU being considered better. Not as tough for OOS because UA has not been on the radar until recently when they started actively recruiting. Not nearly as much past history to overcome.
@Atlanta68 I think you are right about the lower end stats. That was also discussed in an earlier thread regarding UA ranking in USN&WR. I think you were part of the discussion with many good points.
AU (25/75) 24/30
UA 22/31
UA is now looking to focus on their graduate programs, so will see more growth/improvement at UA.
To answer post 25 on this thread (from 2-8), I do think the UA college of engineering will be directing resources to their graduate engineering programs (so no longer supplementing ACT 30-31 OOS from 2/3 to full tuition scholarship) after fall 2016. It shouldn’t be missed that UA’s new President has a very big engineering background and was faculty engineering at UA for quite a while too before climbing the ladder in University administration. He is and will continue to be a great leader, with a different mission that Dr. Witt had.
My DD is in the STEM MBA program. It remains to be seen how many from her class will complete the MBA program at UA. Some eng/cs graduates may decide to continue with UA grad school in their technical field. For DD, it remains to be seen how she does with her summer internship and finishing her UG degree, and perhaps flexibility with employer for her to finish MBA and then return to FT work (with UG degree, student has completed 4 MBA courses; the STEM MBA requires two graduate terms on campus while the two summer terms are on-line).
There are a sizable number of students in another honors program, emerging scholars, where they get into research early as UG.
There is a long range plan going.
UA is the state flagship.
AU is a very fine and academically strong school.
AU historically has had strong women’s and men’s swim teams, but I think UA has done a pretty good job recruiting in some excellent swimmers. AU has a fine gymnastic team, just like some other schools in the SEC. UA has had some very successful gymnastic teams. Winning the SEC championship in any sport is a big deal.
UA is putting resources into a men’s basketball coach/staff - desire to be strong there. UA has a very strong athletics program and continuing to develop and improve with academics.
Football is hugely visible in all the conferences.
Within Alabama, there are many older fans of both UA and AU that never attended the school. Some are gracious fans, some are not. There are stores in AL that strictly sell both UA and AU fan merchandise. UA stuff is selling a lot more heavily in recent times…
There are auburn parents who forbid their kids from attending UA (and probably vice versa), but there are also exceptions.
I do think that some auburn eng’g grads are upset that their school is losing its vise-grip on the state’s eng’g bound college students. They desperately want to hold onto that as “their thing.” But the fact remains that Alabama now has a 4000+ college of Eng’g filled with high stats students and first class facilities.
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Do not underestimate the value of a highly visible football team. Especially in the engineering world that is predominantly male dominated. This very topic was being discussed between several engineers including me regarding helping engineering grads find jobs. One of the people that definitely agreed was from OSU.
UA visibility really helps name recognition on a national level. That type of “advertising” can be bought but at a huge $$$ expense. Name recognition is at least 50% of the battle if not more. The name will open doors for UA engineering graduates in all fields on a national basis.
UA improving facilities/students will improve the “product” substantially. That combined with the above “advertising” will make UA engineering very powerful.
You can have a great product but little name recognition results in low/difficult sales (think great eng schools without national recognition). You have great name recognition but inferior product results in one time sales. The sweet spot is great name recognition with a great product.
Apple is a classic example. In the mid 80’s, Apple was known only as an educational PC. They spent $$$ and improved the user friendliness of the product to break into the general user market. This occurred when Steve Jobs returned after being “fired” in the very early 80’s. Good example of name recognition combining with improved product.
Putting aside the quality of the undergraduate experience (which as parents, most of us are interested in that and cost), much of a Research University engineering department’s reputation is based on it’s grad school and research output.
Auburn, historically, has a good engineering reputation in the South East, more so than UA. All of the construction and enrollment increases is relatively new, in the grand scheme of things.
While UA’s COE enrollment has past Auburns (by a few hundred), Auburn still awards 50% more BS degrees, 485 to 745. A engineer in Alabama is much more likely to be an Auburn grad than an UA grad. That’s will take decades to change.
Auburn has a much more developed grad program. Last year, UA awarded 75 masters and 36 Ph.D.'s, while AU awarded 125 masters and 73 Ph.Ds.
Research? UA was at $21 million, while AU was at $58 million.
Auburn also has a much larger and more seasoned “tenured teaching” faculty
AU: Full Professors: 85, Associate Professors: 37, Assistant Professors: 14 Total: 136
UA::Full Professors: 41, Associate Professors: 44, Assistant Professors: 29 Total: 114
The above numbers, of course, is why UA is changing it’s focus to faculty and grad student recruitment. It will take a few years to determine if the new administration is making progress.
Is the figure that shows how much was spent on research meant to show how much was spent for each school’s respective College of Engineering or for the total research spending of each school? Don’t forget that Auburn has an College of Agriculture, and a Vet School, which bring in enormous amounts of funding for research. UA is not the land grant school, so it misses out on those kinds of programs. And when you show us the number of tenured faculty at each school, are you talking about only the numbers within each school’s Engineering program?
my kids went to the same Catholic high school as @UA2009
However, by kids attended after he left. The high school is located within Cummings Research Park, and as mentioned, the area is dominated by Auburn grads. That’s not to say that there aren’t Bama grads, there are. It’s just the UA’s Col of Eng’g was much smaller for many years…and has seen tremendous growth in the last 10 years.
It doesn’t surprise me that a high tech area, that has a good number of AU grads is going to channel their kids towards AU…but that is changing. We see on the UA parent groups, AU parents admitting that their children are attending Alabama. That said, there are some AU (and Bama) grads that would send their kids to USA, UNA, UAH or UAB rather then have them attend their rival school.
Do we know if more instate students are being rejected? or are more just going elsewhere for greater/better merit? Students whose stats aren’t high enough for the better merit awards, often can qualify for them at USA, UNA, UAH, or UAB…or even Miss St.
Anyone know if the state lottery that is being considered will fund a HOPE like program? If so, that may also help instate enrollment.
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Also, Alabama may be a sparsely populated state by comparison to PA and IL, but don’t think for a second the fact that Alabama residents are now in the minority at UA isn’t a bone of contention in the state.
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Well, they may be annoyed for the wrong reasons. Usually when a state’s population is annoyed that there are too many OOS students, it’s because instate students are being rejected in favor of OOS. But that’s not the case at Bama. I think it’s a cost issue.
@Atlanta68 Good point about the sources of R&D spending. $58M is the engineering R&D.
Overall, the NSF has Auburn ranked 125th in R&D spending at $142M. Clemson is 117th at $161M, while UA is 188th at $53M (UAB is the R&D powerhouse in Alabama, ranked #48 with $428M, all most all on the life sciences).
UA is building up it’s research in STEM, but I wouldn’t be surprise if at some point they get their own medical school (a whole lot of politics around that issue). Medical research is a major source of R&D spending.
Unfortunately, that would require people to acknowledge the facts, which many refuse to do.
I read the comments section after every article posted on AL.com discussing enrollment changes at UA and it’s mind-boggling how pigheaded folks can be. There’s a WHOLE lot of “Don’t let the facts get in the way of my beliefs.”
(And don’t even get me started on the AU vs. UA pissing matches/tribal wars. It’s nuts!)
I agree that the decline in in state enrollment is not due to qualified in state students being denied admission. I just want to know why UA is getting a declining share of the qualified in state students at the same time that it is getting increasing numbers of the top out of state students. Wouldn’t more in state students want to go where so many top out of state students are going? Something doesn’t add up. If Auburn had also been experiencing a significant decline in instate enrollment, then it wouldn’t seem so odd to me.
@Atlanta68 I will answer from OOS perspective from IL. Both of my kids got the Presidential Scholarship from UA. Cost for engineering at UIUC is $31K/year for Tuition/R&B.
They applied to UMN and cost is $22.5K/year with the scholarship received where they get OOS tuition waiver (pay IS tuition). Applied to ISU and cost is $17.5K/year with merit scholarships.
Did not even apply to Purdue, UW, UM because they are known to give very little Merit money and cost would be $38K - 42K/year.
Many high stats OOS students come to UA from IL because the COA is significantly less than IS or surrounding states. The facilities and education are on par with the schools I mentioned.
But that doesn’t address why a declining number of in state students are entering UA.
@Atlanta68 Who knows why top IS students do not favor UA? Maybe they do not like OOS students 