The Lumberjack

Issue date: 10/3/07 Section: The Future of Humboldt State

As freshmen seem to multiply like rabbits, remember that students equal money at Humboldt State University.

Not just because they pay tuition. California State Universities are funded by the number of full-time students who are enrolled in classes each year. In 1993, when the CSU system implemented this numbers-based funding system, it created problems for a small school like Humboldt State.

Each year a census report is generated in the fall after registration is finalized. Humboldt State registrar Hillary Dashiell said that the census report is evaluated by faculty and administration to determine things like program enrollment, class size and retention, as well as student diversity. It is also used to determine the number of full-time equivalent students.

Humboldt State gets $7,710 from the government for each full-time equivalent student. The University wants this money, but not everyone wants the school to grow. Holly Rudolph, a sophomore Natural Resources Interpretation Planning major, likes the fact that Humboldt State is small.

Her parents, who both graduated from Humboldt State, also liked that about the school. But she wouldn't want anyone to get turned away. "If the school has to get bigger to get more money, and that makes it better for everyone who comes here, then that's okay," she said.

Before the money is handed out, however, the chancellor's office sets an enrollment goal for the university in respect to the previous year's enrollment. If the university doesn't reach this goal, it goes into debt.

The enrollment goal gets raised every year, and if it wasn't met the previous year, the odds are it won't be met the next year. Humboldt State hadn't met its goal for the last nine years.

With the largest freshman class in its history, Humboldt State finally met its enrollment goal this year. Mike Reilly, associate vice president of enrollment management at Humboldt State, is pleased. He also has significant work to do to figure out how this change in enrollment will affect campus life.

"Nothing gets improved if enrollment doesn't grow," Reilly said. The extra money is good for the budget, but the state doesn't pay until students are at the university.

Where students can see evidence of this "inherent lag" in funding, as Reilly calls it, is in the lack of housing for on-campus students. Faculty experience the effects of this in larger classes and lack of materials.

Stephen Cunha, a geography professor, doesn't mind the increase in student population. "I think the campus is a more vibrant place," Cunha said. "It creates a more dynamic learning environment." It's worth the extra five percent of work. "Bring 'em on, pack 'em in," he said.

Cunha said that he has always had classes of over 100 students and it wasn't hard to accommodate 20 more. Other professors are concerned about the push for higher enrollment. They don't want to lose the personalized environment that makes Humboldt so special. But Cunha said that professors would just have to be smarter about planning sections and labs.

Students who can't get the classes they want or find a place to live see things differently. Jessica Sevier, a junior whose major is social work, has a few friends who are houseless. "With winter coming I don't know how easy it will be for them to camp out and continue to perform at school," she said.

She also said it might be easy to find general education classes, but its major programs that don't have classes available.

Reilly acknowledged that for this term they focused on providing GE classes. As the upper level classes grow, he said, they will work to expand those as well. He said with the governor-mandated, 2 percent growth per year for all CSU's, it is a learning process in prioritization and strategy.

Faculty members like Dan Faulk, government and politics professor, don't agree that the administration wants to learn. Faulk thinks that President Rollin Richmond and university administration are turning Humboldt state into a student-processing center. He compared this processing style of education to a high school, where the only expectation of students is rote memorization and basic information comprehension. "That is a crime against students," he said.

Provost Bob Snyder presented his plan for an academic program analysis and prioritization to the Academic Senate last week. In this plan, he, the deans of all the colleges, and eventually department chairs will asses which programs are most affected by the enrollment increase and where to direct funding. Reilly said that students will probably be involved too.

Freshmen are happy to be at Humboldt State. Juana Villegas-Villagomez, history and political science major, lives on campus. Her only concern is whether she will have a place to live when the next freshman class arrives. Even the newcomers can feel the pressure of increased enrollment. "I hope the next class isn't quite as big as ours was," she said.

Reilly knows that some people on campus correlate the increase in students with a decrease in standards. That's not the case, he said, and reminds people that in 2005 Humboldt State ranked 3rd in the CSU system for highest SAT scores of enrolled students.

He also knows that a personalized education is important to everyone at Humboldt. But the CSU system wants all colleges to grow. "Sometimes the one size fits all model," Reilly said, "doesn't work for Humboldt."

Heather Brewer can be contacted at hib4@humboldt.edu

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