A 17-percent decrease in summer enrollment numbers since 2007 has prompted university officials to redesign the way the term is funded and scheduled in order to boost student registration in summer 2011.
In an attempt to improve enrollment, Nick Hathaway, OU executive vice president and Administration and Finance vice president, and Nancy Mergler, senior vice president and provost, established the Summer Session Steering Committee, which is tasked with creating new strategies to increase summer enrollment.
The committee’s members are Hathaway, Mergler, Matt Hamilton, registrar and Enrollment vice president, Kelly Damphouse, College of Arts and Sciences associate dean, Robin Stroud, assistant to the executive vice president for Administration and Finance, Joyce Allman, associate provost, Paul Bell, College of Arts and Sciences dean, Chris Kuwitzky, associate vice president and chief financial officer and Gregg Garn, director of the K20 Center for Educational and Community Renewal and associate dean for school and community partnerships.
The two biggest changes are the implementation of summer block scheduling and a combination of funding summer programs through education and general funding and shared tuition funding.
New summer funding
To fund department budgets, the university will fund some courses using the shared tuition model, Mergler said in emails.
Under this model, instructional costs will be funded by 50 percent of tuition revenue generated by students enrolled in the course. The other 50 percent will go to the central administration.
This funding model makes courses more dependent on the number of students enrolled. If not enough students enroll in a course, tuition revenue won’t cover the cost of instruction, and the course could be canceled.
However, colleges have the option to keep under-enrolled courses open if these courses are essential for students to graduate on time, Mergler said in an email.
Some colleges, like the College of Architecture and the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication, plan to use both their education and general budget allocations as well as the shared tuition model to fund courses.
Not every college has this option, however. For example, the program costs of the College of International Studies have grown so much during the past few years that education and general budget money allocated is insufficient, said Suzette Grillot, College of International Studies assistant dean.
The $15,000 allocated to the College of International Studies is still inadequate to cover the school’s summer requirements, Grillot said, and the college would have to use its own funds if it relied on the education and general budget.
The shared tuition model is a better deal for the college because it has the best potential for helping the college break even given enrollment and course expenses, Grillot said.
“It all, of course, depends on enrollment,” she said.
The school used to have another option called “One-Time Instructional Support” to fund courses, Grillot said. Under this funding model, school administrators would request funds from the provost to cover the instructional costs of general-education courses during the summer.
The department would request $6,000 to $8,000 to fund instructional costs, and the tuition revenue would go toward central administration.
Grillot said the School of International and Area Studies always used the One-Time Instructional Support model because the central administration would make more off of the tuition revenue and courses didn’t depend on enrollment.
“It was easier for us to just submit the [One-Time Instructional Support] request and get the instructor’s salary covered through that and not have to worry about what kind of enrollment are we going to reach,” Grillot said.
Now that the department doesn’t have this option to fund courses, professors have to hope enrollment will generate enough tuition to cover costs, she said. If the course doesn’t have enough students to generate tuition, then the school would have to decide whether to cover the cost or cut the class.
Grillot said she didn’t understand the reason for moving the School of International and Area Studies funding model to the shared tuition model.
“I think that in the push for the summer session, in all of [the provost’s office’s] crunching of the numbers, they’ve determined that the shared tuition model is perhaps a better deal for colleges and departments,” Grillot said. “I don’t know that that’s really the case for us.”
However, Grillot said it might be that officials in the provost’s office want the school to focus on boosting enrollment numbers.
“It just depends on whether you’re looking at it from the provost’s perspective or the college’s perspective or the departmental perspective,” Grillot said.
Because of the decreased education and general funding, some colleges have cut summer programs and courses. For example, the College of Architecture will not offer study abroad courses this summer as a result of decreased funding.
“In our fields this is an important educational component that students need, but we are reducing these in deference to other priorities,” said Charles Graham, College of Architecture dean.
Graham said the college would offer courses this summer that help students stay on track toward graduation in place of study-abroad programs.
Other departments, such as the College of Atmospheric and Geographic Sciences, are able to offer more courses than last summer and do not plan to implement the shared tuition model this summer.
Some college’s general funding decreased while others’ increased. The College of Arts and Sciences and College of International and Area Studies received the largest increases compared to last year — $8,089 and $8,954 respectively.
The Price College of Business and Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication were cut deepest — $14,471 and $16,206 respectively.
New schedule blocks
The new block scheduling allows colleges to offer classes on four-week, six-week or eight-week time frames, and offers classes that begin May 16 at the start of intersession and end Aug. 5.
The previous summer schedule began in June and ended in August.
The objective of the new block scheduling is to offer more classes that fit students’ summer work, internship or study abroad schedules and thus increase enrollment by making classes fit in with students’ summer plans, Mergler said.
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MichaelPWright 1 year ago
"Under this model, instructional costs will be funded by 50 percent of tuition revenue generated by students enrolled in the course. The other 50 percent will go to the central administration." This is asinine it seems like nepotism is in full force at OU, Dean of Students, Clarke Stroud's wife Robin is in charge of summer programs. 50% overhead is absurd any business would close with overhead like that OU is bloated in all the wrong areas. Funny how this is in the same paper where OU's debt is increasing. It seems like Boren searches for glory in all the wrong places.