COMMITTEE: Admissions and Recruitment MEETING DATE: October 5, 1998 PERSON PRESIDING: John Cope ACTIONS OF MEETING Description of action: Minutes of Aug. 24, 1998 approved as distributed. Description of action: Clayton reported on the 1998 fall enrollment and the freshman class. We anticipate that recruiting of out-of-state students will become more difficult as the cost of enrollment goes up, as we move to Doctoral II status. UNC-G and NCSU are finding that they have difficulty recruiting more than 11 % out-of-state students. Tom Powell and Marion Sykes will be attending more college fairs this year to interest students in attending ECU and to get a sense of the competition for out-of-state students. The average total SAT for the freshman class is 1019, compared with about 1015 for the last two years and 912 for 1995, the last pre-centered year; enrollment is about 2,800. The Academic Transition Program SAT scores have ranged from 896 to 904 over the past four years. For African American students, which includes some in the ATP program, SAT scores have ranged from 831 in 1995 (pre- centered) to 945 in 1997. The weighted GPA is 3.245, an increase from 3.2 in 1997 and 3.11 in 1995. We don't put in GPAs over 4.0, regardless of how the schools may assign GPAs. The Predicted Grade Average this year is 2.668, close to that of the whole student body. The number of transfers is down this year, from 1,200 to 1,100, as it is in most other UNC campuses, except UNC-G. The reasons for this are that students are remaining in the community colleges for the full two years as a result of the articulation agreements and that all schools are accepting more and more freshmen, not transfers. Projections for the next 2-3 years regarding high school graduates are low; not until the year 2007 should it reach the 1989 level again. The growth in high school seniors is almost entirely west of I-95; east of I-95 it is a net loss. Part of the reason for the decline is the population growth to the west and the loss of population in the east. Also, the national average is that about 80% of high school seniors attend college within two hours' drive of home. Of ECU 's students, about 70% live within that range. For ECU to grow, we have to get more and more students from farther and farther away. We are now going to on-site admissions in the high schools in Raleigh, recruiting one day and returning the next day with students' acceptances. Next year, we are projecting a freshman class of about 2,950, including a lot of out-of-state freshmen. We had the lowest yield rate from out-of-state students this year. Description of action: Cope said that our concern in recruitment of international students is how to be proactive as a committee. Follow-up action required: Cope asked Gulati to chair the subcommittee and to meet before the next committee meeting to establish the ground rules for how to proceed. [After the meeting , Lowe and Cotter volunteered to serve on the subcommittee with Gulati.] Description of action: Cope said that he would represent this committee on the Distance Education and Extension Advisory Board. Misulis said that as representative of the President of the Faculty, Killingsworth, she had no specific comments to make, but that it would help if we could identify issues. Sessoms said that other schools are also struggling with distance learning, just as we are. The N.C. legislature has appropriated about $2.6 million for distance education. Lowe said that distance education covers two types of courses: traditional classes in extension in a classroom away from campus, and distance education, using the Internet. Sessoms said that we must file a site application with UNC-GA for each student that we teach off-site. With a distance education course, we add a technology fee to the cost of tuition. One thing that DEEAB is looking at is how to pay the faculty. Another is equipment costs. Lots of faculty now are on their departmental servers. We had been supporting distance education out of budget line 103 (Extension), but now it is on a new line, 107, for students taking a class from outside the campus boundaries. ECU has been a leader in distance education in the state, serving hundreds of students and offering over 100 courses throughout the year. The average class size for a DE course is 7-9; it is 12-13 for an extension course. The cost is greater for a DE course, but the funding is not. The technology fee should make up the difference over the costs for campus-based courses. Sessoms remarked that there are several indicators in distance education. The average distance education class is smaller than an extension class, so there is not going to be a huge number of students. Extension is still going to be with us. In the number of homes wired to the Internet, eastern N.C. is behind the rest of the country. Cope said that we considered admission of DE students last year, and Tom Powell said that our policy was that they are not considered differently from other students. Recruiting is still of concern to us. We should continue in an advisory capacity , and as we get information we'll pass it along. Follow-up action required: Cope asked the secretary to draft a statement for the Educational Policies and Planning Committee. NEXT MEETING: November 2, 1998, 3:00 p.m., Rawl Annex 142 ITEMS TO BE DISCUSSED: Recruitment and admission of international students Michael Cotter, Secretary