@Southlander What do you mean? Do you mean Instate free tuition vs OOS free tuition? Instate students get free tuition with a lower ACT (30)
Or do mean that the bare amounts are different?
As another poster said, some in-state students choose AU instead of UA. Also some students may get more merit at other schools distributed around the state and also may choose to be in a ‘smaller pond’ school. The STEM improvements at UA has generated a lot of interest from in-state and OOS students.
@mumz14 I would have chosen UA over Temple also. Temple Engineering is very limited as they do not even offer Chem E which is one of the big three curriculums.
Looking at their offerings, it looks like they are geared more toward medical. UA has the full boat.
Just my observation being in the engineering field.
Alabama has the 3rd highest net positive migration of students, it’s only behind Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.
Almost 3,000 in-state students, enrolled in schools out of the state. On the other hand, over 10,500 out of state students enrolled in Alabama schools (in 2014).
Here’s the latest “Residence and migration of all first-time degree/certificate-seeking undergraduates in 4-year degree-granting postsecondary institutions who graduated from high school in the previous 12 months, by state or jurisdiction: Fall 2014”. That’s a mouth full…
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d15/tables/dt15_309.30.asp
Why do in-state students, enroll out of state? Likely for lots of reasons. In-state tuition isn’t cheap (over $10K a year), so for some lower stat kids, some of the low cost OOS schools like Mississippi Valley State University (Tuition is 6K a year, for in-state and OOS students) look appealing. Higher stat kids may earn scholarships at OOS schools and be willing to pay any cost difference. Some families are not “cost sensitive” so it’s not a problem to send the student to an OOS private and pay full cost. Some may have parents that live in another state, so they could have the option of getting in-state tuition rates in that state…
@Gator88NE That is really good information on the link. Interesting to note that the three biggest net negative migration states are CA, IL, NJ and two of the lowest ratios of IS students staying in state are NJ and IL.
This makes sense for IL because the state is bankrupt and they have been cutting higher education funding for years so IS tuition has gone up 3X in the last 10 years. UIUC used to have 80%+ IS students and now it is 71%.
The high stats kids are leaving IL because they get better deals elsewhere, i.e. UA. That is why there is such a large IL contingent at UA.
@CyclonesGrad What I found interesting is that Illinois enrolls 48,500 students (in-state/OOS/international), so that must be it’s “capacity”. Yet the state generates 65,500 freshman students (for 4 your institutions). Even if UIUC and all other in-state schools were 100% in-state enrollment, IL would still be exporting students. Crazy…
In fact, almost 1/2 of IL students leave the state, 29,550 out of 65,500 students. That’s high stat kids, low stat kids, kids with a pulse…
@Gator88NE What you see in IL is the low stats students (18 - 20 ACT) go out of state because they cannot get into IL State schools. High Stats students are leaving because with Merit aid makes COA much cheaper OOS, i.e. UA, UMN, ISU.
The students with stats of 20 - 25 ACT go to WIU, NIU, SIU, ISU, EIU. The IS enrollment at these schools is almost 100% (very little draw from OOS). The enrollment is declining at these schools with the peak in about 2007, i.e. NIU was 23K UG in 2007 and 18K 2015. These schools are not at their capacity.
UIUC had a Freshman class of 7172 w/88% IS in 2007 and a class of 7565 w/72% IS in 2015. They are losing many IS students due to the high IS cost.
The migration out of IL is not due to capacity. The issue is the state has significantly reduced funding. At UIUC, IS tuition/fees has gone up well over 100% for engineering ($9700/year 2006 - $20,600/year 2015) since 2006 (about 7.5% increase/year). This is driving students out of IL.
@CollegeAngst, this story from the Washington Post should answer some of you questions:
All depends on which state you live in. Where I live ¶, in-state tuition to our flagship (Penn State) is $34,000 a year. Same with Pitt.
Does anybody know where to find demographic information about AL high schools? Is it possible the drop in admissions to UA from Alabama residents is just a reflection of a declining number of state residents that age?
I’m pretty sure 1993 was the peak year of the Echo Boom (aka Baby Boomlet) nationally. Not sure how each state stacks up, but that needs to be factored in as well before anybody jumps to the conclusion that fewer Alabamians are applying to UA. Total numbers? Yes. But as a percentage of total number of high school graduates annually? It’s not clear and I haven’t seen any data on that.
Just off the top of my head, I suspect the 3,000 AL students that go OOS break down like this: 1,000 due to high stat and strong financial need, URM, or strong merit at places like MS State; 1,000 due to have the money and kid wants to go OOS; 1,000 due to high stats and have the money to afford OOS public/private.
Not sure if the data is accurate, but here is an article I found. Clearly the author is not an advocate for the school strategy
http://weldbham.com/blog/2015/09/18/myview-taking-the-alabama-out-of-ua/
@CollegeAngst, the author of that is a longtime critic of UA and Dr. Witt. Once he went off on a “second Yankee invasion,” he pretty much lost me. He’s a well-respected geography faculty member at UGA, but there seems to be some personal animosity involved in his crusade against UA. I suspect there’s far more to the story than he’s disclosing. This guy lives and works in GA, is a graduate of UAB, and yet is somehow concerned that UA is letting down the the people of Alabama? I just don’t get it, although I suspect it’s because he feels UAB is getting short shrift somehow.
I do think UA may not be as desirable a destination for some Alabama students as it once was. We’ve discussed that quite a bit here in these threads in the past, and it’s hard to know for certain why exactly, but it would not surprise me in the least if a certain type of student will no longer consider UA now that it’s being “invaded” by Yankees (as opposed to out-of-state students from Southern states). I also suspect that Alabama high schools aren’t keeping up with the increase in admissions selectivity at UA.
@LucieTheLakie Here’s the migration data for Fall 1992:
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d95/dtab199.asp
For Alabama:
Students enrolled in institutions located in the state: 17,582 (1992): 25,181 (2014)
State Residents Attending Colleges in any state: 13,079 (1992): 17,640 (2014)
State Residents Attending College in Home State: 11,238 (1992): 14,645 (2014)
Net Migration of students: +4,503 (1992): 7,541
Nationally, the number of High School students entering college is way up, including Alabama. (Though the rate of growth in Alabama isn’t nearly as great as it is in states like Florida, Texas and California).
UA’s critics do have some valid points, and UA is about to make a strategy change (less focus on increasing undergraduate enrollment and more focused on it’s graduate program). We’ll know more once they come out with a new master plan.
I have expressed concern in the past post about this phenomenon. I DO like the great increase in out of state enrollment, but what has had me concerned was that the number of in state students matriculating to UA has been on a significant decline since its peak in 2008. In contrast, the number of in state students at Auburn has significantly increased since that time.
Others here expressed interest in signing a letter I had written and considered sending to the administration, that expressed concern about this trend, but I held off on it when I saw soon after I wrote the letter that the number of in state students entering UA as freshman was a little larger in Fall of 2015 than it was in Fall of 2014. However, I remain concerned that Auburn had over 400 more in state students enroll as freshman there this last Fall. So the question is, why is Auburn getting more in state students than UA? Also, is it getting more of the best qualified in state students? If so, why would UA get so many more top out of state students, but fewer in state students?
Given that the decline in the number of in state students at UA could impact support from the state’s citizens, I think it is important for UA to look into this and take measures to preserve its status as the state’s choice for a plurality of Alabama students, especially its best and brightest students.
I will try to post data tomorrow to illustrate my points.
I do think John Knox is grinding an ax. Also if he is tenured/tenure track at U of GA (as an Associate Professor of Geography), maybe he has some other motivations for his comments about UA. He also totally ignores that Auburn U is another Alabama school where many ‘feeder schools for UA’ also have their students go. And he has no basis to draw his conclusion from the change in UA enrollment from 2007 to 2014 from the 5 feeder schools. Remember there was a big economic shake up in 2008-2009; some families and students may be using schools in commuter range. UAHuntsville (commuter range with Bob Jones HS in Madison) has been attracting more students with climbing statistics.
I do believe the focus on graduate programs will enhance UA for the future, with the satisfying results with the UG student population and programs.
John Knox is ridiculous. He pretends to care about UA not having as many well funded and more productive grad research programs as Auburn or UGA, or his beloved UAB. What he neglects to say is that both Auburn and UAB have received far more funding from the state of Alabama for years now. Auburn has an Ag and Vet School. UAB has the state’s top medical school. So of course they get more research money. But he likes to compare the spending on research at UA and UAB to insinuate that UA is not fulfilling its mission. He clearly has an axe to grind. Interestingly, for years, out of state students were the clear majority at Auburn, and no one seemed to have a problem with that.
And here are the data sets that illustrate my point about declining in state freshman enrollment at UA vs. rising in state freshman enrollment at Auburn.
https://web.auburn.edu/ir/factbook/enrollment/newstudents/sofstate.aspx (shows the increase from 2010 through 2015, notice the sharp increase in 2014 and 2015)
http://oira.ua.edu/d/webreports/enrollment2/Fall_2015/f18.html (just shows 2014 and the slight increase in in-state freshman enrollment in 2015) and http://oira.ua.edu/factwork/e_factbook/admissions-and-new-students/new-students/new-students-by-geographic-origin (shows 2005 through 2014, in which you can see the peak in 2008)
If John Knox really cared about UA and wanted the best for it, he would be overjoyed by the huge increase in out of state enrollment, for that is a major way that UA is going to be able to afford to strengthen and grow its research programs.
This can only be good for Alabama…bringing in smart kids some of whom are likely to stay in-state after graduation and help with long-term financial growth.
Looks like UA Freshman class sizes are about 50% larger than AU. Was 2008 the tipping point where UA Freshman classes started getting larger than AU?
2015 Freshman class at AU has 60% IS students vs UA has 36% IS (2014).
Couple of questions that maybe someone can give a qualitative answer on:
- Do most AL HS students come from smaller HS (less that 1000 - 1250 total)?
a) Most IL kids that go to UA come from HS that is 2250- 3000 total. - Do most AL students that stay IS prefer a more homogeneous cohort?
a) Many HS in Chicago area have huge diversity due to large drawing area and large mix of ethnicity/income level - Do many students in AL go to Private or Public School?
a) IL Public schools are supported by local RE tax so many people send kids to public schools instead of private
b) Public Schools are mandate to take all (surely same as in AL) so accounts for very diverse student population.