However you want to spin it, spring enrollment is still down a bit over one percent from spring enrollment of 2021.. Fall may look good but we are not in fall yet and things could change before then. You have turned it around when enrollment numbers start going up and do so for several years in a row. One year is not enough to proclaim that implemented changes are working. The university has implemented changes for 20 years and ever time has said they are starting to work and they never have. Get some statistically significant numbers on the books and then claim you have turned the institution around.
I don't think the raw number of students is that significant. SIUC is never going to be what it was in the 1970's - early 2000's in terms of enrollment.
ReplyDeleteWhat is much more concerning to me as both an alumni and resident of Carbondale, was the decline in student quality.
That seems to be very much turned around and that is VERY encouraging. I think student retention rates and average high school GPA are better metrics to follow.
What else do you expect? These administrators spin doctor each time to hang on to their undeserved high salaries. Perhaps the lyrics of that well known SOUTH PACIFIC number should be rewritten the next time Jennifer Fuller interviews "Dr. Feelgood" in "In Focus"?
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXgmQDFhPjo&t=92s
"Hapee talkie, talkie, happee talk.
Talk about things you'd like suckers to hear.
If you don't have a scheme,
Con 'em into wet dream,
How you're gonna get them to feel good again!
Enrollments will always rise,
Everything is fine.
City Council need fear decline.
Happee talkie wet dream works again."
Dave, I do agree with you. SIUC benefited from the focus on GIs using the GI Bill during the 1950s and later international students during the 60s and 70. Plus Having Morris at the helm for over 30 years, whatever his faults, helped grow the university. We have not seen that level of commitment from any of SIUC's leaders since.
ReplyDeleteYet when Morris left, enrollments still continued to rise until Poshard took over as President. Under his "leadership", declines began annually and the fact that the BOT allowed him to remain when he was found guilty of plagiarizing his dissertation and supporting Rita Cheng when she caused the first strike in SIUC's did not help.Morris did attract talent but failed politician Poshard who had no higher education experience drove them away.
ReplyDeleteI have always felt that Morris' leadership built enough inertia into the university's system that growth continued for a number of years after he left. Under a series of less inspiring and devoted leaders, that inertial eventually played out and enrollment started declining towards a more natural level.
ReplyDeleteYou must also consider the Derge Purge of 1973. He had worked with Nixon and the "purge" involved many radical faculty with students carrying posters "Save our socialists". Faculty and staff were traumatized and SIUC never became the same again.
DeleteAlso, I think "inertia" is the wrong term. You really mean "inspiration". Afterwards "inertia" did set in with administrators and insecure faculty ensuring that the creative hires under Morris were no longer around to challenge their mediocrity.
BOT members should not be appointed by the Governor but by direct election from the local community so that no political influences occur that protect people like Poshard and somebody who was fired as President by his previous University (which should have set alarm bells ringing!) but hired here anyway.