|
|
There have been recent discussions on enrollment and attendance. Check out this link to compare all ULS schools. There are many statistics, including the percentage of undergrads living on campus. With that you can see who is the biggest suitcase college or commuter.
We are actually 3rd in enrollment, FAR behind ULL and SLU. I didn't know SLU had over 14K.
http://www.ulsystem.net/index.cfm?md...p=home&pid=120
The enrollment at SLU reportedly first jumped when LSU went to higher admission standards and those who couldn't get admitted to LSU but wanted the "social life" simply went "next door."
And also anyone can get into ULL and SLU.Originally Posted by Ken_Horndawgs
Yes, it is true we are the best academic school. There are many other interesting statistics there besides enrollment. We are the only ULS school that isn't majority female. ULM is 67% female.
Also of note is the percentage of professors who have obtained the highest degree in their fields. We are way above everyone in this regard.
Good info. Thanks for posting this.
This info further substantiates my case that Louisiana Tech desperately needs to GROW it's student enrollment. According to this report, Tech only has an enrollment of 10,500 students, including part-timers. Only 8,356 are undergraduates, with 6,737 full-time.
This is much smaller than it should be.
Clearly, Tech needs to improve it's recruitment of women (only 48%), and out of staters (only 10%). These are two target markets that Tech clearly lags behind other schools.
HD
I think Tech has a larger male population partly because of engineering, aviation, Agriculture, and AF ROTC. Those are very well respected programs of Tech's that just happen to be male dominated areas. If the reputation of our Nursing, education, and liberal arts departments improved more females would enroll. Those programs are very good, but are always put on the back burner to engineering. Adding a 4 year nursing program would help too.
I agree we need to increase enrollment, the only negative would be the cost of having to build new buildings (which would also be a positive since we need new buildings anyway). And I think Reneau has said he doesn't want to have more than 12,000 students. I think if we could be at about 15,000 enrollment we would be in good shape.
I think we should increase enrollment, as well. Unfortunately, our President is going for small and elite. I think 15,000 with selective admissions is workable and would be a big boost.
But the actual percentage of those who either possess or are vaginas is much, much higher.
And for the record, Reneau has said 12,000 is what we CAN support with our current infrastructure. To support more students would require massive changes on a scale that becomes cost ineffective (unless you want to sacrifice quality, e.g., faculty-to-student ratio).
Oh, one more thing. It's not on there, but ULL also has nearly twice as much money in endowments as Tech does. And that, my friends, more than any other statistic, predicts that our march toward true eliteness may be short-lived.
With 7,635 full time student, Hogdawg is right. Seems like we are having as much trouble putting butts in classroom seats as we are in our stadiums.
Noticed that out of the 3 Div-IA schools we have the lowest tuition also.
Oh, I wasn't arguing with that. I was arguing with the notion that Reneau wants to cap enrollment to keep Tech "elite." We don't cap enrollment per se (it's not like we are turning people away). What Reneau has said is that we can't accommodate more than 12,000 without major infrastructure changes or major sacrifices in quality.
A separate issue is that we still lack a good bit to even reach our current capacity.
And I believe an important aspect of that (and a current block to Tech's growth in general) is our lack of asserting influence in the Shreveport area. In terms of support for our athletic programs, numbers of students to apply to our programs, ties to businesses and economic growth, reaching out to alumni, and increasing our endowments, asserting influence in Shreveport, staking it out as our home metropolis, is ESSENTIAL.
Doesn't matter. Throwing up a few more buildings is no big deal.
If Louisiana Tech wants to compete at the FBS level, we simply MUST grow the enrollment. IMO, the enrollment numbers in this report simply aren't large enough to sustain our athletic programs at the FBS level long term.
As for academics, we've also got to stop kidding ourselves with regards to this "elite" crap. Where is that coming from? I'm extremely proud to be a graduate of Louisiana Tech, but I dare say that not one of the 60,000 people empoyed by my company would consider Louisiana Tech an "elite" institution. I'm not saying we should lower our academic standards......but our standards aren't that much higher than most FBS schools anyway.
HD
I agree with your "Shreveport" comment but it goes further than that.
Yesterday, I was complaining on another thread about Louisiana Tech not attending my son's High School "College Day" event last fall here in McKinney, Texas. For some reason, over 150 colleges and universities attended this thing, including all of the Ivy Leage and Pac Ten schools, but NOT Louisiana Tech. Of course the usual Big 12 and SEC suspects were in attendance too. From the state of Louisiana, we saw Centenary College, NSU, ChickenHawk U, Grambling and pretty much all of the south Louisiana schools too. But again, NO Louisiana Tech.
Consequently, when it came time to pick a college, none of the kids in this area were interested in Louisiana Tech. Now I know why only 10% of our enrollment includes out-of-staters. This is absurd. Somebody at Tech just too lazy to RECRUIT good out of state kids.
HD
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
