Enrollment warning
UNM leaders brace for significantly larger drop in numbers than originally forecast.
Just days before the start of a new academic year, University of New Mexico’s leaders are warning that enrollment could be significantly lower than initially projected.
Having experienced head count declines each of the past five years, UNM anticipated another loss this fall and designed its budget around a forecast 2.5 percent drop.
But now officials are bracing for worse.
The drop is “going to be quite a bit bigger,” Terry Babbitt, vice provost for enrollment management and analytics, said Tuesday.
Babbitt said he had no numbers yet, as classes don’t start until Monday and fluctuations occur during the first few weeks of the semester.
But UNM President Garnett Stokes prepared UNM’s regents for some lower-than-expected figures, saying the administration has already implemented some changes in recruiting strategy but will need an “all-hands-on-deck” approach to tackle the issue.
“What I want to do is come back to you later after we’ve examined this more thoroughly and know what our final numbers are so we can plan on what our strategies will be for dealing with our enrollment situation,” she said during her presentation at Tuesday’s Board of Regents meeting.
UNM’s enrollment has been trending downward. It fell 2.9 percent from the fall of 2016 to the fall of 2017 and has dropped a cumulative 9.3 percent since its 2012 peak.
Ironically, improving graduation rates may be contributing. UNM has more than doubled its fouryear graduation rate in the past five years.
“The fact that we’re trying to get our students finished actually works against (the enrollment numbers), but that’s a good problem to have because
we want to continue to increase our graduation rates,” Stokes told regents.
But she and Babbitt cited a number of other reasons UNM has struggled to recruit and retain students — some of them larger than the institution itself.
Demographics — specifically New Mexico’s population stagnation and the net out-migration — have meant a narrowing student pipeline. An improving local economy is another factor. Babbitt said in an interview that UNM is especially vulnerable to losses when jobs are more plentiful, because many of its students are likely to choose a paycheck over school.
Albuquerque’s unemployment rate was 7.8 percent in June 2012, shortly before UNM’s enrollment peaked. Unemployment was 4.9 percent this summer.
There are also issues of competition. Babbitt said more UNM prospects than ever before opted to go to Central New Mexico Community College.
Concerns about campus safety may also cost UNM some students. The university has more auto thefts than any other campus in the country, according to federal data, and prospective students routinely ask about Albuquerque crime during campus tours.
Stokes told regents Tuesday that fear about crime and safety can and does prompt students to choose other institutions.
“It’s one of the reasons I made campus safety probably my highest priority coming in — because if we can’t address campus safety, and the perception of it, we will continue to take a hit in the communities, both in Albuquerque, but really throughout the state and outside of the state,” Stokes said.
Enrollment is a major concern at UNM, given its impact on revenue. The previously anticipated drop of 2.5 percent represented about $2.5 million in lost tuition dollars, Babbitt said.
In other action at Tuesday’s meeting:
Regents approved a new master of science degree in global and national security. Emile Nakhleh, director of UNM’s Global and National Security Policy Institute, called it an interdisciplinary degree with a “broad” view of national security — covering subjects such as terrorism, international law, food and water security and cybersecurity — and described it a natural fit for UNM, partly because of the university’s proximity to two national laboratories.
Backed by $475,000 in donations, regents approved naming a new professorship in the UNM School of Medicine’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology after Dr. Luis Ben Curet, a professor emeritus in the department. They also approved appointing Dr. Luis A. Izquierdo to the professorship.