More than doubled in 7 years

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Alabama
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<p>Went to the reception today in Milwaukee. Dean Karr spoke. He is a good speaker. One thing he mentioned is that 7 years ago, Bama had 14,000 students, and now it had 32,000 (34,000?). That is more than double in 7 years. He said they build a new building every 72 days.</p>

<p>Anyway, it got me thinking:</p>

<p>1) What is their vision that lead to the expansion?
2) What growing pains have they gone through?
3) How are they funding the expansion? Most states have tight budgets, and could not afford the additional operating costs. I would understand if it was for in-state, kids, but over 50% of the new students are OOS.
4) Are they done, or what is their target?
5) With twice as many kids, they would have had to hire twice as many Profs. How are the new Profs (better, worse, about the same) compared to the tenured faculty?</p>

<p>Any thoughts about their growth?</p>

<p>I can see now why they are offering the generous scholarships. They need to attract high caliber kids so they can become known for graduating high performing kids. Seems like the right time to be going to college.</p>

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<p>Anyway, it got me thinking:</p>

<p>1) What is their vision that lead to the expansion?</p>

<p>Dr. Witt, the former President, now Chancellor, put in place a 10 year vision, and I think that got expanded to a 15 or 17 year vision…The Planned Growth Plan may be on the website, I’ll look for it.</p>

<p>2) What growing pains have they gone through?</p>

<p>Typical growing pains…needing more parking, more dining venues, more dorms, etc.</p>

<p>3) How are they funding the expansion? Most states have tight budgets, and could not afford the additional operating costs. I would understand if it was for in-state, kids, but over 50% of the new students are OOS.</p>

<p>The new Science and Engineering Complex was largely funded by earmarks from the Federal Gov’t. </p>

<p>I’m not sure what you mean by your OOS comment. The OOS students bring money INTO the school. Only a small % of OOS students receive scholarships. Most are full or near full pay.</p>

<p>The univ returns 2-3 dollars to the state for every dollar the state spends on the univ.</p>

<p>4) Are they done, or what is their target?</p>

<p>I’d have to find the Planned Growth Plan, but I don’t think the growth is done. The plan is to grow the grad school, the law school, and I think, the med school on campus.</p>

<p>5) With twice as many kids, they would have had to hire twice as many Profs. How are the new Profs (better, worse, about the same) compared to the tenured faculty?</p>

<p>Lucky for UA, univs across the country have had hiring and promotion freezes, so Bama has been able pluck some of best of the best when others didn’t have budget to hire or promote.</p>

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<p>I’m glad you enjoyed the presentation and Chuck Karr’s speech. I’m also glad to hear that he was a good speaker; five years ago people were saying that he seemed out of his element at Bama. It goes to show you that people tend to like Bama more and more over time as they get to know it.</p>

<p>m2ck gave great responses, but I’ll also chime in on the student prospective.</p>

<p>1) What is their vision that lead to the expansion?
Dr. Witt took on the challenge started by his predecessors to grow UA in both size and quality to make it first like the University of Michigan and later the southern, more conservative version of the University of California Berkeley (minus the financial troubles). Long time UA employees sometimes joke that UA used to turn the lights on and take whoever showed up; that is far from the case nowadays as UA rejects most applications for admission.</p>

<p>2) What growing pains have they gone through?
UA is working hard to keep the small school, everyone knows everyone feel. Apart from some complaints about parking and dining halls, the growth has been relatively smooth.</p>

<p>3) How are they funding the expansion? Most states have tight budgets, and could not afford the additional operating costs. I would understand if it was for in-state, kids, but over 50% of the new students are OOS.</p>

<p>Alabama is steadily decreasing funding to UA. As Alabama has long been one of the financially poorer states in the union, UA has long had to look for other sources of money such as private donations and government pork. Alabama’s senator Shelby was quite possibly the last republican congressperson to stop the use of federal earmarks as his goal was to get a billion dollars in federal funds to help Alabama colleges and universities. UA’s academics also get large amounts of money from athletic revenue as UA has one of the few athletics programs that makes a [very large] profit. UA is also second behind UT-Austin in revenue from licensed merchandise sales, the proceeeds of which mostly fund scholarships. Along with some donor money, the large scholarships are partially funded by OOS tuition revenue. Most OOS students at UA do not have scholarships.</p>

<p>4) Are they done, or what is their target?
Informal conversations with individuals in charge say that future growth will be very small and that UA will likely top out at 35,000 full time undergraduates.</p>

<p>5) With twice as many kids, they would have had to hire twice as many Profs. How are the new Profs (better, worse, about the same) compared to the tenured faculty?
With UA’s increased ranking and the general state of the academic job market, UA has been attracting some very high quality individuals. Class sizes are still very small for a public university, with the largest class size being around 260 and major classes generally having 10-50 students.</p>

<p>With this being my 4th year at UA, I have enjoyed watching the university grow and cannot imagine myself attending another university for my undergraduate years. It is truly a special place that I will miss a lot after I graduate.</p>

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<p>[A</a> Vision Becomes Reality](<a href=“http://issuu.com/universityofalabama/docs/visionreality]A”>A Vision Becomes Reality by The University of Alabama - Issuu)</p>

<p>Not sure if this link is “allowed” or not I guess I will be told if it isn’t :)</p>

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<p>The average cost of operating Bama was $684 million in 2010. The number of FTE’s is about 28,000, for an average cost per student of $24,400. Other than the Graduate Professional Schools, the average Out of State Tuition and Fees was $20,500 in 2010.</p>

<p>Note: The Student Fees is only about 40% of total revenues. It would be interesting to see the Data Summary from 2003, to get an idea of the cost of running an institution 1/2 the size. One would expect that 1/2 the size would have 1/2 the expenditures, with non-student revenues not declining as much.</p>

<p>Even assuming that OOS break even on operating costs, with 1/2 of the university being OSS, then you can allocate 1/2 of the capital costs to OOS. That is a huge subsidy for OOS.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.uasystem.ua.edu/IR%20Data/datasum-current.pdf[/url]”>http://www.uasystem.ua.edu/IR%20Data/datasum-current.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Any data to support that? With 25% of the class with a GPA of 4.0 and above, I would bet a lot of those our OOS, and getting the full tuition scholarship. With 44% of the class in the top 10% of their HS, a lot of them are getting a good portion of their tuition covered by a scholarship.</p>

<p>I would argue that a larger percentage of OOS will fall into the high GPA/scholarship pool. If you are a low GPA student, you would have a higher incentive to attend your own in-state school. Also Bama would have less of a desire to admit a low-GPA OOS - They are trying to build a high performing school, so either admit high GPA students, where ever they live, or low GPA students in order to fulfill the State University function (keep their State Subsidy).</p>

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<p>Any data to support that? With 25% of the class with a GPA of 4.0 and above, I would bet a lot of those our OOS, and getting the full tuition scholarship. With 44% of the class in the top 10% of their HS, a lot of them are getting a good portion of their tuition covered by a scholarship.</p>

<p>Bama enrolls about 600 frosh a year with Presidential scholarships (this includes NMFs/NAs). Some of these are instate, some OOS. Don’t know the number that receive the UA scholar (2/3 scholarships), but the number is likely less. The rest of the 6000+ frosh aren’t getting big scholarships. </p>

<p>The number of students with high GPAs/top 10% is irrelevant. GPAs are inflated all over this country. There’s a whole bunch of high GPA kids with modest test scores. </p>

<p>As unbelievable as it may be, most OOS students are not getting much/any scholarship money.</p>

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<p>OperaDad - those high GPA students also need to have the corresponding test scores for the big dollar scholarships. There were many parents I spoke to at the Chicago receptions whose students had stellar GPAs but could not improve on their 28 or 29 ACT scores.</p>

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<p>From what I have read, it seems UA has wanted to grow to enable it to be less dependent on unreliable and insufficient state funding. the focus now seems to be on growing the Grad School enrollment, which will allow more professors to spend more time doing research. You can’t achieve a Tier 1 research rating without lots and lots of grad students available to do the grunt work.</p>

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<p>I concur with what class2012mom said about test scores. The high GPA will get you into Bama, but that 32 ACT can be a really tough thing to hit for many students. Even with a 4.0+ GPA. I know that ACT score (or SAT score) was not common in my son’s school. Even among the top 10% of students at his school. </p>

<p>I think that there is a thread on here somewhere that gave the % of freshman with scholarships. i would have to search to try to find it. </p>

<p>Also remember that a huge chunk of the scholarships is from income earned by the atheletic department! </p>

<p>I do think it would be interesting to find out how many of the students “lose” their scholarships, and then must leave the university vs those that lose the scholarships and stay but pay full tuition.</p>

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<p>Opera Dad, I can give you anecdotal evidence from my D’s school, which is admittedly a small sample. Over the past several years, 20% of the students from our local high school (in Illinois) who have gone to UA have received merit scholarships. 80% have not. That being the case, I am not at all surprised to hear that most OOS students do not have scholarships. </p>

<p>Remember that there are a lot of kids from other states who want the big state flagship experience, complete with big time Division I sports, who can’t get into their own flagships even though they have very respectable stats. There are also some state flagships (UIUC is one) that are nearly as expensive in-state as Alabama is OOS, particularly for majors like business and engineering that are surcharged.</p>

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<p>There were many parents I spoke to at the Chicago receptions whose students had stellar GPAs but could not improve on their 28 or 29 ACT scores.</p>

<p>Right…</p>

<p>It really broke my heart when about 18 months ago, a Maine student really, really wanted to go to Bama. He had a 4.0, but his test scores weren’t high enough for good-sized merit. They had hoped that his GPA would get rewarded, but not without the scores. The mom pm’d me about how they now felt that they focused on the wrong thing (straight As), not realizing that more effort needed to go towards scores. they couldn’t afford the OOS costs.</p>

<p>Because students can take many paths in high school…rigorous curriculum (lots of APs, etc), strong curriculum (some APs/honors), lighter curriculum (no APs/lighter math/sciences), the scores are often the “tell-tale” sign.</p>

<p>There are also some state flagships (UIUC is one) that are nearly as expensive in-state as Alabama is OOS, particularly for majors like business and engineering that are surcharged.</p>

<p>this is true. I think one of the reasons why Bama has been so successful recruiting in Illinois is because an ACT 30/3.5 GPA engineering student gets free tuition plus 2500 per year. That makes Bama a very affordable alternative.</p>

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<p>Absolutely true, but even a student who doesn’t qualify for a scholarship at Bama won’t pay much more OOS at UA than in-state at UIUC. In-state tuition and mandatory fees for a business or engineering major is over $20,000. That’s before you add on room, board, books, etc.</p>

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<p>*Went to the reception today in Milwaukee. Dean Karr spoke. He is a good speaker. One thing he mentioned is that 7 years ago, Bama had 14,000 students, and now it had 32,000 (34,000?). That is more than double in 7 years.</p>

<p>He said they build a new building every 72 days.*</p>

<p>I’m going to look at those numbers. It seems that undergrad and grad numbers are getting misused, but maybe I’m wrong. I think the old 14000 number was undergrads only, while the newer 32,000 number includes grad and law students.</p>

<p>Right now, there are 28,000 undergrads…I don’t know if that includes “distance learners”. Over 2300 undergrads are over age 25, so they may be taking night classes or be distance learners.</p>

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<p>Here’s the link to the Master Plan that has been revised and extended.
[Campus</a> Master Plan Update](<a href=“http://www.uafacilities.ua.edu/planning/pages/cmp-update.htm]Campus”>http://www.uafacilities.ua.edu/planning/pages/cmp-update.htm)</p>

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<p>The Professional Grad programs have OOS tuition of $50k/yr.</p>

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<p>I guess I am use to schools where a 4.0 doesn’t get you into the top 10%, and 3.75 kids are getting 2100 on SAT and 31 on the ACT.</p>

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<p>*The Professional Grad programs have OOS tuition of $50k/yr.
*</p>

<p>Where are you seeing that? </p>

<p>The OOS tuition cost for grad school is about $23k per year. </p>

<p>And the OOS tuition for the Law School is considered a bargain at $33k per year.</p>

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<p>Page 95
<a href=“University of Alabama System | UAS”>University of Alabama System | UAS;

<p>For OOS:
Law is $30,950, but…
Community Health Services $58,590
Medicine 58,590
Dentistry 54,760
Optometry $51,420</p>

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<p>That’s the UA system - that is not Bama and has nothing to do with Bama’s grad school numbers.</p>

<p>Bama doesn’t have medicine, dentistry, or optometry. I’m not even sure if it has “community health services” (that sounds like UAB). </p>

<p>So, when I was speaking about Bama’s grad school enrollment, I certainly wasn’t talking about grad programs that the school doesn’t even offer.</p>

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<p>The College of Community Health Sciences is part of the University of Alabama system’s medical school. It is housed in Tuscaloosa, available to third and fourth year med students, and focuses on primary care, particularly in rural parts of the state.</p>

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<p>^^^</p>

<p>Right, but those students are not Bama students. They aren’t counted in Bama’s grad numbers.</p>

<p>My point was that Bama wants to expand its grad numbers, and OperaDad commented that the OOS grad school is expensive, but then gave the prices from another school.</p>