This article includes an in-depth discussion of the student demographic changes at Alabama, and also the debate as to whether it’s been a good or bad thing for the State of Alabama:
It’s getting to be old news by now.
As an OOS family benefiting from UA’s merit aid, I am very sensitive to this whole issue, so thank you for posting. This is not getting old, rather, such is a necessary reminder to seek ways to give back to the university and its community, for the generosity extended to us. Roll Tide.
Elliott Spillers was VERY disappointing as SGA President. When he won, I was overjoyed, but when he pushed the “We are Done” agenda, he lost my support. He failed to stand up to members of that group who have made completely bizarre and unsubstantiated allegations about race relations at UA. When he helped to create and participate in a youtube video that disseminated a completely false urban legend, without ANY evidence, that Whites at UA had attacked Blacks and kicked in doors after Obama won, he was being incredibly irresponsible and disloyal to his own school. When I challenged him on this matter, he simply said he had no reason to doubt Amanda Bennett, the other student in the video who made the false allegation. Sigh.
Thank God the controversy at Mizzou did not fully transfer to UA. Mizzou is now facing a huge financial shortfall given the lower number of students enrolling there this Fall. Students do not want to attend a school that so easily caves in to radical and dishonest student activists driven into a fury by critical race theory.
And it sounds like Elliot is profiling when he says he doubts he would have won had UA not increased its OOS percentage. He was not the first Black student elected president of the SGA.
As for Ernestine Tucker, maybe the Times should have asked her what SHE has done to increase the academic performance and the test scores of Black students in her school system. I am SOOO tired of Black leaders calling out other parties rather than taking responsibility for the underachievement in their community. UA’s standards for admission are still far more liberal than most other flagship schools. If a Black student can’t make the minimum cut, that is not UA’s fault. UA is well known to have one of the highest enrollments of Black students of any flagship in the nation. It also has one of the highest percentages of Black faculty. It is a shame that people like Ms. Tucker are given national platforms to continue their pity party.
On a positive note, the number, though not the percentage of in state students enrolling as freshman last Fall 2015 was higher than it was in Fall of 2014. It does trouble me that for the last two years, more in state students have chosen to attend Auburn than UA. UA had been getting the most in state students from 2006 till 2014.
I’m newish to all this, so I appreciate the link and the article. It will be food for thought for S.
I do find it interesting that it seems to paint “much” of the OOS 'Bama merit kids as “affluent.” I’m curious if that’s true? (and using what criteria)
Also slightly amused at Ms. Tucker’s disappointment that the school isn’t trying harder to recruit local students. My state schools are, at best, ambivalent about my state’s students. There’s no recruitment or encouragement going on here, and we don’t even have the excuse of filling half the seats with OOS kids.
^^^^ Same here in IL about UIUC being ambivalent or maybe even discouraging.
What is affluent? My kids received great merit money which helped our family out by not requiring my kids to take out Stafford Loans. We are far from affluent here in the far northwest suburbs of Chicago.
@LucieTheLakie - thanks for sharing. These articles are great because the remind us of the danger that media outlets like the NYT pose to everyday hardworking successful (aka “affluent”) Americans. The intelligentsia that write for these rags don’t want our kids to enter the “elite” universities in the Northeast or on the West Coast because our kids have all the advantages that the poor (fill in your favorite underprivileged group name here) don’t have. They push for social engineering that results in kids with lower academic results coming out of high school being accepted into the elite colleges. Shut out of the elite colleges, our kids are then expected to pay $60K a year (or more) to attend 2nd tier elite colleges (usually those without the word University in their name), run up huge debt and then exit college with degrees that are not worth the paper they are written on.
Now our kids have seen us toil, sweat, scrimp and sacrifice for many years. They too worked hard and they’re very smart. That’s why they have the high GPAs and Standardized test scores that qualified them for scholarships. They look at the situation and say “why should I go into debt” when a perfectly good college will let us come for free or at least at lower fees than we would pay instate (such as in CA). They’re smart enough to figure it out on their own and this bothers outlets like the NYT because those writers think they can pull the wool over everyone’s eyes.
So our kids go to UA and they end up loving it. They participate in great programs like CBM, STEM MBA, etc. They thoroughly enjoy the football, even when they were never fans in the first place. They enjoy the social seen. They like the people in the South. They then tell their friends and spread the word about how great the school is and more students come. UA is a true success story. The problem for the NYT is that it isn’t a poor (fill in your favorite underprivileged group name here) success story. Dog bites man … you know the rest.
As for the Alabama locals who are quoted as being “concerned”; I never heard any concern from the folks who rented my child an apartment. I never hear a concern from any store or restaurant I spend my money at. People seem genuinely happy to see the us when we’re in Alabama.
Long term, these kids will be successful in many fields. They will give back to UA with donations. The “free” tuition will be repaid many times over because these kids had the time of their lives at UA. I love the folks running UA because they get it.
ROLL TIDE!!!
It may be “old news” to many of us who’ve already gone through the college search process, but every year there’s a “new class” of unwitting parents in for a shock when they find out their in-state flagship is unaffordable and/or unattainable for their student, whom they’d just assumed would be going there.
Many of these large “public flagships” are only quasi-public at best, getting only a small percentage of their operating budgets from state appropriations. How many taxpayers are really aware of this? I’d venture most parents (and perhaps even school board members like Ms. Tucker) are not, until it’s time to start checking out colleges for little Jennifer or Jason.
Like @aeromom, my OOS family is benefiting from UA’s merit aid, and I am very sensitive to this whole issue too. The fact that Alabamians (of any race or class) are eligible for the big merit awards with lower stats than those of OOS students seems like an important and valuable accommodation and is evidence that the university is committed to its own state’s students.
But UA is first and foremost the state’s flagship, so I’m not sure why Ms. Tucker believes it should be making Tuscaloosa students a priority just because of its proximity. They have Shelton State (a feeder to UA) right there to meet that need.
Re how to define “affluent” (which is relative, after all), I don’t think many families who can easily afford paying $60,000 a year for college for each kid are targeting big merit money at OOS public flagships. I certainly don’t know of any, and my son attended a private high school with a lot of families in that category. Most of the families I’m aware of looking for big merit dollars are solidly middle- or upper-middle-middle class and just cannot reasonably afford the EFCs of most of the privates they considered or perhaps even their own state flagship (if they live in a state like PA or IL).
Keep in mind that the NYT is a liberal newspaper. They write a significant amount about social injustice, etc. Interestingly, I never see this kind of article in the Chicago Tribune which is more conservative.
The Chicago Tribune has been writing a significant amount about the cost of UIUC driving IL students out of state as they seek OOS high payers. The paper has also written significantly about the lack of state funding, down 60% per student from 2006, to IL universities.
FYI, IS students in Freshman class in 2006 was 85% and in 2015 was 73%. A considerable drop.
Without subsidies from out-of-state students, the % could be much lower.
However you feel about the New York Times, at least they cover issues related to higher education at the national level. Aside from them and the Washington Post, you’re otherwise pretty much left to read education publications, like the Chronicle of Higher Education or Inside Higher Education.
I’m not sure why folks are inferring a huge bias in the article. It’s attempting to tell a larger, complicated story and provides a number of viewpoints. I didn’t find it critical of UA, just raising the same issues many have raised here. And the Times also invites comments and takes the time to moderate them so they’re generally quite civil and many are quite thoughtful.
^^^^ Could be very true because they could not afford their facilities. That is the huge discussion here in IL. Governor wants to cut even more to balance state budget.
UA is much more stable and will be a top 25 engineering school in short order.
I agree that the NYT article was not critical of UA more than it was critical of any state system mentioned. I felt that they were telling several sides of the story with an even-handed tone.
Quoting a local education official who said that maybe UA is not doing enough to recruit Black students is typical of the Times. They never miss an opportunity to raise the specter of racism, especially when the state of Alabama is discussed. Again, why isn’t this official talking about the need for local officials, parents, and students to raise Black students’ test scores? Perhaps UA could do more to recruit in state students in general, but there is no evidence whatsoever that UA is not reaching out to schools with high Black enrollments across the state. In fact, I know that it is. UA is deeply involved in the Black Belt communities for example.
Did anyone notice this in the article? “University officials say the acceptance rate for those students [in state students] — 63 percent — has remained the same.”
Given that UA only accepted 53% of all applicants last Fall, one of two things is true: either UA has higher standards for admitting out of state students, OR that in state students are at a higher level in terms of their ACT and GPA, etc. I would bet the former explanation is mostly likely to be true, which should quiet critics who think UA is being unfair to in state students.
I love what UA is doing!
As a parent of a child considering applying to UA for the merit aid, this caught my attention:
Except that graduates of a given state’s public universities, wherever they may have originally come from, are much more likely to stay in that state than, say, people who grew up in that state but went elsewhere to college. If Alabama wants to improve its socioeconomic profile (and let’s be honest, it historical hasn’t rated well on a lot of such measures), then it could certainly do worse than attract probable future contributors to the local knowledge economy.
@CyclonesGrad Whoa there, horsey. :)>-
Keeping in mind that rankings/reputation is over-rated when it comes to undergraduate engineering programs…
UA has a long ways to go before it breaks the top 50, let alone 25. Looking at a listing from 2013, it wasn’t even in the top 75. For example, NC State, Ohio State and UC-Davis were ranked 30, while Auburn (53) Clemson(58), and Northeastern University (58) were not in the top 50. Reputation drive these undergraduate degree program rankings (while research, faculty quality, as well as reputation drive graduate program rankings), and that’s a hard needle to move.
I bet if you look at ALL of the state flagship universities, you’ll find schools like the UC’s and UIUC (where qualified in-state students are rejected for OOS students) are more of an exception that the rule. Many more are facing decreasing enrollment (from in-state students) and are being “forced” to offer tuition discounts to recruit OOS students, otherwise enrollment would drop.
Look at what happen at the University of Missouri, where OOS enrollment tanked (due to the issues last fall). The state didn’t’ have enough in-state students to back fill for those missing OOS students.
The state of Alabama has the same issue, far more “seats” available than in-state students able to fill them.
I know that several New England publics have the same issue. That’s why the University of Maine put in place it’s Flagship Match Program that allows out-of-state students to pay their equivalent in-state tuition and fees. It needs bodies, even more than the OOS tuition premium.
If the UA College of Engineering can improve its grad programs, which is the stated goal of the new strategic plan, I believe that will only raise the rep of the undergrad program. Already, the avg. ACT of incoming engineering students this last Fall was 29.8. It was higher than that for Auburn’s incoming engineering students. This happened despite the continuing rep that Auburn has for being the state’s top engineering school. It is truly an amazing jump in the quality of the average engineering student at UA.