It is absurd that siue enrolls more students than SIU. Their campus is borderline ugly, their academics are equal or worse, and the town is boring. It has to be marketing and consistent leadership. You can say the population is larger there, but it’s only 1.5-2 hours from Carbondale. We’ve had bad leadership, and every time we get a good leader recently they die of a freak cancer or have been chased off; it is really a shame and some hard luck. John Dunn is a great person, but we need someone like him that will be permanent.
Completely agree. Not impressed with the new enrollment manager at this point. I still believe with some intelligent admin (haven't seen it in a long while), SIU will come back. Will never be 25K again and that's fine. There are so many positives - I'm optimistic.
I'm starting to think Jerry Kill should be the Chancellor for the next decade. He knows how to get stuff done. Not sure an academic leader has the ballz to do it.
In order to come back, won't the enrollment have to increase from one semester to another. Continuing what we're doing isn't going to work. Giving staff and faculty raises isn't going to turn the problem around. Roll the org back to the numbers on the payroll when we were 20k plus would drastically reduce payroll costs and the corresponding reduction in tuition would get us more student. Dump the useless majors would save a lot of money too further reducing tuition and increasing enrollment. This isn't rocket science, you run the campus like it is Chicago government and the price increases drive away the customer. The efforts to "fix" SIU in the past completely ignore the problem with having staff increasing with enrollment decreasing. If our research status prevents us from dropping deadbeat programs, then give up the research status.
“The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see.”
― Ayn Rand
Has the staff been increasing? I have no idea. I'm sure the administration is somewhat top heavy. Lowering the tuition to make it more affordable would be the smartest thing to do. Making departments own their enrollment issues would be smart. I would like to see a list of majors and the number of students in that major over the last few years.
Need much better media exposure in Chicago, St. Louis, etc. SIUE bombards the St. Louis area with their spin - radio, TV, billboards. The SIU has their head up their arse when it comes to this - haven't done it right or with enough exposure for the last 15 years.
The Grand Valley where CMU is located... I've ridden my bike several times in and around this canyon from downtown (campus area) Grand Junction.
One thing somebody said earlier, though; SIU's tuition is high compared to most, but ends up being reasonable after scholarships, grant, etc. Why put students, parents, families through that? There is already enough going on when a kid goes off to college. It's just one more hoop to jump through. Why not just simply make tuition competitive or slightly lower than schools in the region and promote the snot out of the place.
But bottom line; the anchor around all of this is the state. As we've mentioned and seen, almost every college/university in the state has declining enrollment. The state is losing residents due to (lack of) leadership in Springfield. Trying to increase enrollment is almost like trying to get water from an empty well. If the family hasn't already left by the time a kid graduates HS, the kid will do their best to leave shortly there after. Just is what it is. Doesn't mean there shouldn't be an effort and things can't change. Just means it's going to be an uphill battle.
Illinois State just reported a record freshman class of 3,860 and a total enrollment of 20,878. I guess we should have kept Larry Dietz. What are we doing wrong.
Yup; and several on his staff are Saluki alums. I worked at SIU Res Life with a couple of them.
While schools like SIU are feeling the pinch, upper echelon universities are getting more applicants than ever. One reason is that a B.S. from some schools are valued more to industry than others. Another problem with declining enrollment schools is the necessity to have remedial courses for just about everything. When trolling for students whodon'thave the educational background (they can't read, write, add, or use the library or a computer) extra money must be spent to provide these basic abilities. I saw where WIU laid off 40 teachers and left 60 other positioned unfilled, has SIU done this?
“The best thing about freshmen is that they become sophomores.”
-- Al McGuire
One thing somebody said earlier, though; SIU's tuition is high compared to most, but ends up being reasonable after scholarships, grant, etc. Why put students, parents, families through that? There is already enough going on when a kid goes off to college. It's just one more hoop to jump through. Why not just simply make tuition competitive or slightly lower than schools in the region and promote the snot out of the place.
It’s not really putting families through anything else. If students are getting free tuition through the chancellors scholarship, that’s a different story because they go through an interview process. Other scholarships are based on high school GPA and ACT/SAT scores and automatically apply without an extra effort.
Jerry Kill was just asked about enrollment on the football pregame “cornering the AD”. He mentioned we’re doing the same thing as regional universities, we just don’t tell anybody. Other schools promote it and sell it (scholarships and aid), whereas SIU doesn’t do that. Kill mentioned they weren’t expecting enrollment to be even as high as it is now when he came in, and with adding new programs such as nursing, enrollment has to go up next year. He said he’s probably going to get in trouble for saying this but enrollment needs to go up next year.
I personally think what Kill does with athletics helps sell the university and has a positive impact on enrollment.
I think what frustrates me most about SIU is even back when I was in school from 2005-2009 enrollment was starting to drop and they ALWAYS have an excuse, ALWAYS claim that stat 5 in the numbers is a positive! Just ignore stats 1-4! Even now 10 years later its the same dog and pony show, enrollment dropped big including the size of the freshman class, but they want to squawk and squawk how "oh it was just an exceptionally big senior class". The senior class didnt make this year's freshman class 8% smaller than last years! Our retaining being better is good but I feel like we've heard that before. The fact of the matter is they are continuing to bring in less students year over year. Kill is absolutely right, if adding several in demand programs doesnt get the numbers up next year its a disaster
I agree, every year it’s a new excuse. We spent $1 million on online recruitment, we’re one year in with DeHaemers, and the state has committed the money we asked for so the results better show in higher numbers next year. Not “improved retention”, “improved ACT score”, “we lost less students than we lost last year”, “all signs pointing up” every year.
I agree, every year it’s a new excuse. We spent $1 million on online recruitment, we’re one year in with DeHaemers, and the state has committed the money we asked for so the results better show in higher numbers next year. Not “improved retention”, “improved ACT score”, “we lost less students than we lost last year”, “all signs pointing up” every year.
Not unlike other aspects of "public education" one has to exclude the "employees" (e.g. faculty and staff) who are most interested in perpetuating the status quo and their own well being from the process. Give the Board of Trustees an opportunity to turn the ship around by giving marching orders to the administration. If that doesn't turn it around in one year take out the trash (those given marching orders) and if changes don't occur the year after, then remove the rest of the trash (Board of Trustess). I suspect that getting out of our "box" and studying another out of state successful school's key metrics (belly buttons on the payroll, total compensation, overhead costs per student, etc.) will reveal the exact issues at hand. "Not enough tax dollars" is very likely not even a contributor to what is going on. I have to warn everyone that an analysis such as this of SIU and e as a package may reflect poorly on SIU.
“The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see.”
― Ayn Rand
One thing somebody said earlier, though; SIU's tuition is high compared to most, but ends up being reasonable after scholarships, grant, etc. Why put students, parents, families through that? There is already enough going on when a kid goes off to college. It's just one more hoop to jump through. Why not just simply make tuition competitive or slightly lower than schools in the region and promote the snot out of the place.
It’s not really putting families through anything else. If students are getting free tuition through the chancellors scholarship, that’s a different story because they go through an interview process. Other scholarships are based on high school GPA and ACT/SAT scores and automatically apply without an extra effort.
Jerry Kill was just asked about enrollment on the football pregame “cornering the AD”. He mentioned we’re doing the same thing as regional universities, we just don’t tell anybody. Other schools promote it and sell it (scholarships and aid), whereas SIU doesn’t do that. Kill mentioned they weren’t expecting enrollment to be even as high as it is now when he came in, and with adding new programs such as nursing, enrollment has to go up next year. He said he’s probably going to get in trouble for saying this but enrollment needs to go up next year.
I personally think what Kill does with athletics helps sell the university and has a positive impact on enrollment.
Jerry Kill needs to run the whole damn university. He has more common sense that all of the other PC, academic-speak, pinheads combined. I highly doubt that Jerry Kill would have been good with the infamous "special admissions program" from a few years ago, which dramatically (negatively) affected enrollment.
The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.
James Madison
