Southern Illinois University at Carbondale has an
enrollment, and thus a revenue problem. Student population is shrinking. They
have lost around 50% of the freshman population over the past three years. Official fall
2017 enrollment at Southern Illinois University Carbondale is 14,554, a decline
of 9% percent over 2016. Their new
Chancellor, Carlo Montemagno is saying it is “because
we are not offering programs that are distinctive and relevant to today’s
students.”
But is that the reality
they are facing at SIU-Carbondale?
They are losing 56% of
every entering class the graduation rate is only at 44%. The University also recognizes that it is not
necessarily a problem of underprepared or incapable students because it stated there
is “a continuing increase in ACT scores for new freshmen and ongoing growth in
freshman retention rates” which is at 68% freshman to sophomore year which is
not all that great really. The University if losing almost a third of every
entering class before sophomore year.
What his all means is that attrition is losing the
University $113,801,801 annually. (To calculate how much attrition is costing
your school click
here.) It is losing more than it has
to spend. That is a financially dangerous situation to be in.
The Chancellor’s response is a radical restructuring of
the University out of individual departments into groupings that will cut the
overall number of departments and colleges.
He has proposed that the University collapse its existing eight colleges
and 42 departments and schools into five colleges and 18 schools, two of them
being law and medicine to cover the lost revenue. He further plans on eliminating
some departments entirely. He hopes the new structure will stimulate synergy
and cross thinking to generate new ideas and programs. These, he believes will
stop the population erosion.
The Chancellor believes new relevant programs will
attract more students.
But this does not make
logical sense since the problem is that the University is losing students after
they come to school. The students originally chose the school for its programs
and degrees to start with but something else made them leave. The offerings
were sufficient to get them in the door but then something is happening to make
them leave. Attracting more students
will just lead to more dropouts. It is not admissions that is at fault. It is
something else.
The issue is not how to attract more students but how to
keep them? How to increase retention from 44% to some rate that will begin stabilizing,
then growing the student population. The University cannot keep losing over
half of its students annually if it is to succeed no matter what the structure of
its departments and colleges.
It, like most every college and university, needs to
focus on retention to stabilize its population and revenues and that will not
come about by re-organizing the departments and colleges. It needs to find out
why students are leaving. If it does and corrects the issues, it can and will
increase population making a radical restructuring that will turn faculty
against the Chancellor unnecessary.
Southern Illinois has an
engagement problem that is made worse by poor or weak services that would
attach the students more fully to the school. A large part of what is occurring very
likely is that the University is not providing students what they need and
expect especially in how they are treated, i.e. academic customer service. We
already know that 76% of attrition is caused by poor or weak service provided
to students as shown in the chart below. The major reason students leave a
college is that they believe the college does not care about them and that is very
probably a factor at Southern
Illinois as it is with so
many other schools we have studied to see why students left them. The
University is not providing an ease of service and procedures that make the
students believe the school does not care if they succeed or not. They are
probably putting students seeking help into “the shuffle” of having to go to
office to office trying to find the services they need.
If we were to do a study
of the University’s student attitudes I would be willing to bet our fees that a
major concern students would express is that “I have not been treated and
helped very well. The school does not care about me. All they care about is my
money.” I can make this offer because we have found this to be the situation at
just about every college that we have studied with a high attrition rate. The
University likely does a good job of recruiting students but not as good a job
reselling them on the school every day by providing the services students want,
need and expect.
We also know this is quite
likely true because closely behind the reason for leaving “The school does not
care about me” is the category of “weak to poor customer service”. Students report that they cannot get the
services they need to complete a needed function for example. They go to an
office to get help and are given less than good service, maybe even abrupt and indifferent
treatment students report. This in turn
feeds into the belief that the school does not care about them. Just think how
you feel about a business or a restaurant that treats you poorly or gives bad
service. You don’t go back. Well, students make a buying decision to attend class
and stay in school each and every day. If they are treated poorly, they will
not want to invest their tuition and fees in the school and leave as you would
a store that ignores you or gives you bad service.
All of this makes the
students believe that it is not worth it to put up with a school that does not
care and treats them poorly and they drop out. It is also quite likely that at
Southern Illinois they are cutting sections to try and save money. This is a
normal, but wrong way to save money because it also cuts students out of
classes they need to progress in their major quite often.
We observed a school
recently that decided to only offer some required courses once a year in the
Fall but did not fully communicate that to students, and advisors did not seem
to know of it either. One of those was in the senior year. Students waited to take the course the next semester
when it could fit in the schedule to find it was not offered. They had to wait
until next year to get the course which often meant they had to take some
course that might not fit in their major to remain full-time to get full
financial aid. They had to stay longer in school to get the course complete their
program. This caused problems because they had to stay another year to make up
courses but their financial aid ran out in four years and they had trouble
affording the cost of the extra year. Many could not and had to drop out to
earn money to pay for school often not coming back.
This is all indicative of
a school not with an admissions problem but a retention and customer service problem.
Would this be the situation
at Southern Illinois or your school for instance? It is likely that weak or
poor academic service is leading to much of your dropout/attrition rate. If
Southern Illinois found our precisely what services were not being done well and
fix them, it would increase its retention rate and the revenue needed to
operate instead of causing major upheaval which likely will not solve its real
problem – retention.
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