<p>[How</a> many Bama students should be from outside Alabama? (Opinion from Dr. Richard Crow) | AL.com](<a href=“http://www.al.com/opinion/index.ssf/2013/12/how_many_bama_students_should.html]How”>http://www.al.com/opinion/index.ssf/2013/12/how_many_bama_students_should.html)</p>
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<p>I know this has been discussed here ad nauseum, but it’s a good discussion to have.</p>
<p>My answer depends in part on a couple things I do not know. First, how many of the out of state students the University attracts are staying in the state post-graduation? I would imagine that since the majority-OOS classes are a relatively new thing, this isn’t really known yet. And second, how many qualified in-state students are being turned away to accommodate the OOS students? This has to keep in mind that not every student in the state who wants to go to college needs to or should go to the state flagship. I can see where an influx of talented OOS students, most of whom are paying more than in-state tuition, could benefit the state and the in-state college population as a whole, even if there are some borderline in-state candidates who are denied admission. If significant numbers of qualified in-state candidates are not being admitted, though, it’s a different story. </p>
<p>We live in Illinois, and admission to our state flagship is pretty competitive. I know plenty of kids with good grades and ACT scores over 30 who have been denied, particularly for the business and engineering schools, even though the vast majority of UIUC students are in-state. It is also expensive - tuition alone is in excess of $20,000 for in-state students in majors such as business and engineering (it’s a few thousands less for some other majors). I wonder if in-state tuition would go down if OOS enrollment increased, although since we’re in the land of corruption, I suspect the additional dollars would just line someone’s pocket and not benefit the university as a whole.</p>
<p>^^^ Cynic! :-)</p>
<p>Just as we have expected, there are starting to be voices expressing “concern” about UA being a magnet for out of state students. In looking at the comments at al.com, the real critics of UA’s success seem to be Auburn alumni bitter and jealous about UA’s success. Our faculty and staff salaries are increasing, while those at Auburn are stagnating. Our campus is growing, and becoming even more beautiful, and so is Auburn’s, but due to our record enrollments, UA can pay for its improvements. UA will always be the target of many jealous people.</p>
<p>I recently looked at the scholarships page for both UA and AU. I was shocked by how much more generous UA scholarships have become relative to those at AU. No wonder the Aubies are jealous!</p>
<p>I’m most cynical about how many students in Alabama want to go to UA for the academics vs how many want to go to join the Greek system, party, and go to the football games.</p>
<p>with the huge growth of the school, it can probably accommodate all of the qualified alabama students PLUS the huge influx of OOS students.</p>
<p>The answer is…</p>
<p>enough OOS full-payers to keep the budget in the black</p>
<p>enough OOS high stats kids to keep the upper quartile at ACT 31+</p>
<p>with the huge growth of the school, it can probably accommodate all of the qualified alabama students PLUS the huge influx of OOS students.</p>
<p>exactly! and that’s one reason why Dr. Witt chose to grow the school rather than just make it more selective to raise the upper quartile. </p>
<p>It’s very hard for a school to become a serious STEM (particularly eng’g) school when the upper quartile students aren’t the best and brightest. Those kids need to be able to do well in calculus, gen chem, ochem, physics, and upper division STEM classes. Trying to pass thru a bunch of modest-stats kids thru those programs just causes a school to dumb-down the classes and risk accreditation. Plus, it’s very hard to recruit the best profs when you can only offer average students in the seats.</p>
<p>Many state flagships limit the # of OOS they accept. Further more, the OOS they do accept are generally athletes and very high stat kids. So, Alabama is in uncharted waters in this situation. It’s a legitimate concern for Alabama residents. There is no doubt in my mind that there are disgruntled Alabamians who have received denial letters from their state flagship. </p>
<p>My guess is that this trend will be short lived. I think Bama will find the sweet spot to be about 45% OOS. That keeps the high stat OOS kids coming AND satisfies those residents of Alabama that truly believe that the majority of students at Alabama should be in-staters.</p>
<p>Biddaddy88, you do realize that UA’s minimum admissions standard is a 21 ACT and a 3.0 GPA, right? That is hardly restrictive. There is no reason why UA should be the school for EVERY high school student in Alabama. As the school’s prestige increases, it will help everyone in the state. </p>
<p>I feel like this is a crabs in a bucket situation.<br>
Some people will just not be happy if someone does better. </p>
<p>If you can’t make the minimum, which again, is not a very high standard, go somewhere else. It is that simple.</p>
<p>It is frustrating that the state of Alabama gets such bad press for being near last in so many indices, and yet, when its state flagship tries to set a higher standard and gain prestige, there is a chorus of people demanding that it dumb down its standards.</p>
<p>Atlanta, cool down! No need to get so worked up! My D is one of the OOS high stat kids benefiting from the generosity at UA. I’m simply saying I can understand that there could be well-meaning folks in Alabama who do not want their state flagship being majority OOS. That’s all.</p>
<p>I didn’t assume you were in state Bigdaddy88. My rant was directed toward those in Alabama who might resent UA for its admissions standards.</p>
<p>"Many state flagships limit the # of OOS they accept. Further more, the OOS they do accept are generally athletes and very high stat kids. "</p>
<p>Yes, those states tend to be states that have higher populations than Alabama and therefore they need to limit OOS seats so that the instate kids have a chance.</p>
<p>"There is no doubt in my mind that there are disgruntled Alabamians who have received denial letters from their state flagship. "</p>
<p>Well, there should be doubts in your mind. When you look at the numbers of instate kids that attended Bama 10 years ago and the numbers that attend Bama now, you’re not going to see some reduction. </p>
<p>Bama had long had 30% OOS enrollment…for decades. The 70% instate, when undergrad enrollment was MUCH lower, isn’t a higher number than the instate numbers in recent years. </p>
<p>Dr. Witt knew that residents would be outraged if a fair number of instate kids weren’t admitted, so the solution was grow the school…significantly.</p>
<p>In Fall of 2004, undergrad enrollment was about 16,000 students. If 70% were instate (which was the trend back then), then that would be about 11,200 instate students. </p>
<p>This fall there were 29,443 undergrads. 40% are instate. That’s 11,777. So, it’s not as if Bama has been slamming the doors on a bunch of instate students.</p>
<p>If UA was being supported with lots and lots of Alabama tax money, I’d be very concerned. But the state has reduced its contribution to UA to a very low percent over the years (and this was before the relatively recent OOS scholarship offers). I believe someone told me several years ago it was less than 10% of UA’s total budgeted income - and as I said, that was a number of years ago.</p>
<p>However, as a longtime Alabama resident, yes, I am a little concerned. Qualified Alabama students should not be pushed aside for OOS students. After all, UA was founded to provide Alabama students with higher education.
But I have seen plenty of local low-ACT-scoring kids get in, so I’m not worried. Many either step up to the studying or are gone by their fourth semester.</p>
<p>I think we’re forgetting WHY these kids want to go to UA over, say, Auburn. It’s because UA is excelling academically, athletically, and professionally. How does UA accomplish rising grades, winning teams, and nation-wide alumni hiring power? By taking the best and the brightest, and incentivizing the best students to come with scholarship money. </p>
<p>If UA rapidly cut down its OOS population, there would be less reason for in-state students to want to attend.</p>
<p>I think part of the overall plan (Witt and Shelby) was that Cummings Research Park needs a constant flow of STEM grads to be employed.</p>
<p>So, the thought process may have been to grow Bama (especially eng’g) to create a pipeline of new-hires to these jobs. CRP is growing…and more companies want to move there…but they need to be convinced that the state can supply educated STEM employees to fill the jobs. </p>
<p>I agree with Southlander…If there were stories of qualified instate kids getting denied that would be one thing. However, the kids that aren’t getting accepted seem to be ones that dont’ have the minimum req’ts of grades, test scores and/or HS curriculum. There are High Schools that will graduate kids w/o Bama’s basic req’ts…so they’re not going to be admitted no matter how many OOS students are admitted.</p>
<p>As for Feeno’s concern about why some OOS kids choose Bama. I really don’t care “why” and it’s really none of our business. Once the student is here, if s/he is passing the classes then that can be really the only concern. Do you really care if a student who gets his/her business degree at Bama came for the academics or came for football games? People choose schools for a variety of reasons…to “go out of state”, to follow a boyfriend, girlfriend or best friend, to have a full college experience, to attend a school with a beautiful campus, to go to their parent’s alma mater, for a strong program, or what-have-you. Sometimes the choice is based on serious stuff, sometimes it’s not. </p>
<p>It’s really none of our business.</p>
<p>M2CK,</p>
<p>How can you be so smart?</p>
<p>Roll Tide.</p>
<p>As long as Alabama does not follow in the footsteps of what Texas has done for higher education, they will continue to climb to the top. When you start accepting students based on zip codes, good things can not continue to happen. Many very high stats Texas kids have fled OOS due to the dumbing down of higher education in state. Sure, there are plenty of top stats kids going to Texas schools, but, plenty are getting in based solely on their high school class rank and not scores and/or GPA’s. I could have sent my IB kid to some podunk school district in Texas to become the Val. The bottom line was, are you going to come out of high school well prepared for college. Even in our own district, she could have gone to a non magnet school and been higher ranked. That was not the goal. The goal was also not to see how many IB/AP credits she could rack up for college credits. She even skipped some of her IB/AP tests as she was not going to use them for college credit. Of course, the school was not happy. </p>
<p>That said, because of the top 10 rule in Texas some of what were the better flagships have lost their luster. You can not make “rules” that are arbitrary to skew enrollment to please a group of people and expect the academic standards to continue to rise to the top. Class rank is not a good indicator. You have to use something more proven in order to attract the students that will marticulate, SAT/ACT scores & GPA are the best indicators. I would rather a school take an graduating class of high school seniors if their GPA and test scores were high stat vs class rank that means nothing. Telling 90% of the class they were “not good enough” based solely on their class rank when they could have 31+ ACT, etc</p>