How do Alabama Residents feel about this?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Alabama
1

I was just looking at the Undergraduate enrollment trends at the University of Alabama over the last 8 years or so, and was astonished at the complete reversal between In-State/Out-of-State students.

In 2007 the freshman class was roughly 66% Instate and rest OOS. In 2015, it is rougly 66% OOS and rest In-State.

Has this change made it more difficult for local residents to get admitted to the University? or have they simply gone elsewhere by choice and the state is just filling the empty space with out of staters?

That is a massive swing and I was very curious to hear about how Alabama Residents felt about this.

2

Has the total enrollment number gone up as well? Could it be that the overall number of in state student has remained the same or is slightly higher/lower but the overall enrollment numbers have risen and been filled by OOS?

3

My D is actually there today touring and seriously considering it as an OOS primarily because of the generous scholarships…

4

The size of the school has grown a lot since 2007 …and yes, the OOS versus in-state PERCENTAGE has changed a LOT. However, the NUMBER of in-state students admitted is nearly the same now as in 2007 (and maybe even up a bit?), if I recall correctly. I don’t have the numbers/sources in front of me – but others will chime in. This was discussed a couple of months back.

5

The University has grown significantly over that period - planned growth. My understanding is that qualified Alabama students are still being accepted to the University and it’s not a situation like in some states where an OOS student pushes out an in-state student. I would think that the presence of so many out of state students, making the school much more diverse, would be attractive to Alabama residents.

Edit: I saw a Washington Post article that said between 2000 and 2013 the University of Alabama’s enrollment increased 92%.

6

@fm0101: From what I can see the in state enrollment has gone down around 17% over the last eight years as the total enrollment has increased about 60%, which is fascinating

7

This is an interesting trend in higher education.

Not that I am complaining, my son is a high stat kid and we are very grateful that Alabama is giving him generous merit aid, but I have also heard that in some state like CA and IL, the flagship schools are turning away local teenagers much to their chagrin to give seats to higher paying OOS students to make up for severe budget cuts, whereas in other states like Texas, local laws restrict out of state enrollment to around 10% or so.

8

That is interesting. What would be fascinating would be to figure out why. Are students not going to UA because they can’t get admitted, are they going out-of-state for the same reasons many students want to go to an out-of-state school, are they going to other in-state schools? I think there has also been significant growth in the number of students who are not from Alabama and its surrounding states. There was a time when most OOS students were from adjacent states, but now there are a lot of students from Texas, California, Illinois and many other states that don’t touch Alabama.

9

I think overall today’s HS student are exposed to a much larger variety of options as far as colleges go, when you can sit in your room and take virtual tours or schools, snapchat, IM, instagram, Skpye, FaceTime, groupMe, CC, etc. etc, etc, with current or other prospectives students, Admins, at schools across the country, inevitably it is going to lead to more kids going to schools outside their home and bordering states. Not sure how you would quantify how big for small a part this plays but I think it is fairly significant. As my wife and have been telling our D during the past 12 months of her college search, which included - attending college fairs and speaking with 100’s of reps from schools around the nation, taking road trips from NY to Boston to DC to NC and in NYS to visit prospective schools, to working with essay coaches and ACT coaches, to filing out apps, and now to revisiting accepted schools and seeing some schools for the first time, when we went to school there was none of this, you researched a school in the library or brochure that your GC gave you and applied. Mostly to States schools or if you were a bit better off to schools in DC or Boston, end of story. Much different landscape today and all for the better…

10

The top states in order of enrollment are Georgia, Texas, Florida, Tennessee, Illinois and California

11

College Angst is correct on the 17%. See below

Incoming Freshman
2007 4538 67% IS = 3040
2015 7211 35% IS = 2524

UG Population (full Time)

2007 20,910
2015 28,689

Freshman in Greek System

2007 17.5% Frat, 21.9% Sor
2015 31.7% Frat, 50.1% Sor

Seems that Greek system has grown a lot from 2007 to 2015 via class size and % entering. Must be the golden era! :wink:

All information from Common Data Set, 2007 and 2015

12

Interestingly the State has been giving the University around $145 Milliion/yr. That has not changed since 2006

In 2006, the University made $168 M in Tuition Revenue. In 2015 that number was $633 M!!!. They gave out only 19% of tuition rev in scholarships in 2006. In 2015, they give out 28% or tuition revenue in scholarships, but since the revenue has increased almost 300% doesn’t seem to be hurting the University that much.

Interesting strategy the University is following. They have essentially become a “private school” from a “state school”

I was thinking that most of the out of state students must have been attracted by the scholarships, but that is clearly not the case. A lot of kids are paying $25K a year in tuition to attend Alabama, when cheaper state alternatives are probably available. That is fascinating, because we are considering Alabama because of the scholarship :slight_smile:

13

Fall 2007
Total In-state Enrollment: 18,532
OOS: 6,318
International: 730

Fall 2015
Total in-state Enrollment: 17,222 (7% decrease)
OOS: 18350 (290% increase)
International: 1,492 (204% increase)

http://oira.ua.edu/d/content/reports/enrollment-census

The total in-state enrollment has decreased, but only by 7%. The numbers are much more shocking at schools like UCLA, UIUC, etc. For most state residents, a reduction in 7% to fund UA’s growth seems acceptable. However, it is a balancing act to keep up this growth, without facing substantial pushback from the legislature and state residents.

Keep in mind that UA is still pulling in a significant about of Tuition revenue from these OOS students, even with generous merit aid. We’ve had past threads that go into this in much more detail. However, at some point, UA does need to stop growing it’s undergraduate population and focus on it’s grad school (2009: 3,942 Graduate students, while 2015 only had 4,649). It’s already beginning to make that turn…

14

@Gator88NE I think looking at total enrollment hides some of the bigger changes going on, since it aggregates many years into one number. Freshman enrollment is probably a more telling statistic as it compares entering freshman numbers between two years. Freshman enrollment will also tell us whether the change is accelerating YtY or stabilizing.

Also, I suspect UA is not going to stop with increasing the undergraduate enrollment anytime soon. Witt came from the University of Texas system, which has a much bigger undergraduate population. He is retiring this year though. Will be interesting to see if Hayes, charges forward with the same strategy

15

I know of no qualified Alabama resident who has been denied enrollment at UA. I think some of the in-state enrollment drop has been due to some in-state students feeling overwhelmed by the size of campus. Some can be attributed to a periodic swing of interested to Auburn. When one school is “down” in football fortunes, some sympathies swing to the underdog, which has been Auburn for a few years now.
Some is also attributable to the top Alabama students being attracted away to OOS schools by the same scholarship offers than UA offers to out of state students.
I can’t offer any solid facts for this (but would welcome any proving one way or another), but it seems that an Alabama kid with a 32 ACT will not get the kind of scholarship money that an OOS kid with a 32 ACT will get.

16

@Southlander What? See link, in state, out state, are offered the same scholarships

http://scholarships.ua.edu/types/in-state.html

17

Southlander, do you mean scholarship money from Alabama or from an OOS school? If the latter, I think Bama is the highest rated school offering automatic full tuition for a 32 and 3.5, so I think you’re right. If the former, an in-state 30 gets full tuition just like an OOS 32, but the tuition is lower.

18

Here is my experience as an OOS person from IL. I have twins, DS2 and DD2, that got 33 and 30 ACT both with 4.0 GPA, respectively. They applied to UMN, ISU, Iowa, and UA. The cost for Tuition/R&B were as follows for each:

DS2
UMN $23,500 (received OOS tuition waiver, only pay IS rate)
ISU $16,500 (academic + engineering scholarship for >32 ACT)
Iowa $28,000 ($10,000 Tuition scholarship)
UA $11,000 (Full OOS Tuition Scholarship - Presidential)

DD2
UMN Same as DS2
ISU $19,000 (no engineering scholarship)
Iowa Same as DS2
UA $11,000 (Scholar scholarship (2/3 OOS tuition) + 1/3 OOS tuition from Engineering college)

They did not apply to UIUC (state flagship) because IS students get very little merit aid and IS cost for engineering id $31,000 Tuition/R&B. We know of at least one IS student with 4.0 GPA and 33 ACT that got $5000 merit from engineering college so cost is still $26,000.

Did not apply to Purdue because well known to not give merit aid. Same for UW.

UA gets many high stats from IL because of the merit scholarship resulting in low cost of attendance. I doubt many kids from AL come to Midwest schools because the IS cost at UA of $23,850 for Tuition/R&B is equal/less than what the cost after scholarships for the schools mentioned above.

If an OOS student gets only the UA Scholar Merit, the cost for Tuition/R&B $22,300. This is still better/equal to all of the flagship schools mentioned above.

From the above, I definitely understand why many OOS students with 30+ ACT are looking/going to UA.

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@southlander An Alabama kid and an OOS with 32 ACT get the same scholarship at UA which is Presidential (Full tuition). An Alabama kid with a 30 ACT gets Presidential and OOS gets Scholar (2/3 OOS tuition). I cannot see why an Alabama student with 30 ACT or higher would go out of state. Any thoughts on that?

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Looking at the scholarships for IS, I cannot understand how any AL student with 27+ ACT can get a better deal OOS considering COA for IS at UA is the same as many other flagships.

http://scholarships.ua.edu/types/in-state.html
https://studentaccounts.ua.edu/estimated-budget-for-fall-and-spring/

Auburn Scholarships (not as good as UA) and COA (comparable to UA for IS)

http://www.auburn.edu/scholarship/undergraduate/freshman.html
http://www.auburn.edu/admissions/files/costofattendance_14-15.pdf

Where are all of the 27+ ACT AL students going? Are they going to AU at a higher annual cost? UA is a really good deal for IS and OOS with 27+ ACT and 3.5 GPA.

19

Here in state, it does not seem any more difficult to be admitted. Admit percentages for our local high school remain above 95%, and it’s a HS that sends over 100 freshmen a year to UA.

20

Temple University in Philly offers about the same OOS (presidential) Scholarship as UA. The only difference for Engineering is the student gets an $8000 stipend over 4 years vs. $10000. My son received that however he chose Alabama over Temple for a multitude of reasons. FYI, we are from Nevada.