Overall enrollment of first-year, full-time undergraduate students in the University System of Maryland decreased over the past year, leading the Board of Regents to discuss the causes and consequences at a meeting last week.
Some of the 13 institutions, including this university, are actively attempting to hold down enrollment in order to preserve academic quality because of a lack of state funding earmarked for recruiting new students. But for most of the institutions, the dip in enrollment is troublesome, officials said.
System officials are attributing the decrease of almost 320 first-year, full-time students — 13,213 in fall 2008 to 12,894 in fall 2009 — to the economic downturn. They also cited the lack of state funding as a possible cause.
“We aren’t seeing enough money coming in from the state,” said Patricia Florestano, a member of the Board of Regents and chairwoman of the Committee on Education Policy. “The money just isn’t there.”
Contrary to the overall trend, freshman enrollment increased 7.5 percent last year at this university even though officials are enacting stricter admissions policies to avoid overcrowded classrooms and a drain on the university’s limited resources.
Undergraduate Admissions Director Shannon Gundy affirmed that Provost Nariman Farvardin aims to decrease undergraduate enrollment.
The numbers were first reported to the board — a 17-member panel of gubernatorial appointees that oversees the system — earlier last month at the Committee on Education Policy meeting and were presented to all the regents Friday.
The report, which provided an overview of preliminary fall 2009 enrollment growth and patterns, provided hard evidence for the regents demonstrating how the economic state is affecting system institutions.
As a result, Florestano said system institutions are being more careful in the number of students they admit, although last week’s meeting didn’t result in any recommendations or changes in policy.
“We’re not telling them not to grow, but all the institutions are being very cautious,” she said. “We’re not delighted with this, but we recognize that until the economy stabilizes, we could be seeing these decreases continue.”
Although increasing overall enrollment is a high priority for the system at large, the enrollment rates of most system institutions are actually predicted to slow in the next year.
During a 10-year period, system officials predict a 24-percent growth in student enrollment —with a 23-percent increase in undergraduate students and a 25-percent increase in graduate students.
However, for this university, decreasing the number of full-time, first-year students who enroll is in line with many long-term goals including maintaining academic quality and raising the caliber of the student body, officials said. The overall goal is to reduce enrollment at this campus by 800 students by 2017, according to a 10-year projection report issued to the board in 2008.
From 2008 to 2009, according to the report, undergraduate admissions at this university increased 0.5 percent, which is higher than the 10-year plan’s projection of 0.2 percent.
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