UNT Dallas campus lagging projections

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UNT Dallas campus lagging projections
Stephanie Patrick Staff Writer

OAK CLIFF — Its location near the intersection of Camp Wisdom and Houston School roads may tease passersby with what "might be," but hopes that the proposed University of North Texas at Dallas campus could open as soon as 2007 have faded.

UNT officials said this week that all references to that date are overly optimistic, because full-time-equivalent enrollment at the UNT System Center at Dallas — 308 full-time students — is far short of the 2,500 needed before securing state approval to offer courses and grant degrees at the proposed college.

The facility is referred to as the UNT Dallas campus.

FTE numbers are calculated by dividing by 15 the number of credit hours taken for undergraduates per term, and by 12 for graduate students per term.

The Center on Hampton Road — opened three years ago as a precursor to a full-blown campus in southern Dallas — has more than 869 students, but most attend part time. Legislation signed last year by Gov. Rick Perry mandates that UNT not begin enrolling students to a full-sized UNT Dallas until there is a sufficient number of full-time students available to sustain the university.
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UNT officials had hoped to reach that goal by September 2006, which would have allowed construction to begin in 2004.

"I project that we would need 5,000 to 6,000 (total) students in the head count," said John Ellis Price, executive director of the Center. "That is not realistic for that particular time frame."

Texas public universities' enrollment grew 5.9% last year, according to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. Meanwhile, UNT's total enrollment grew more than 8%.

The university, which includes the main campus in Denton and the Center, reported its highest fall enrollment ever this year with 30,183 students attending, or an FTE enrollment of 23,934. The previous record, set in 1990, was 27,160 students.

"Our continued enrollment increases are the result of a strategic recruitment and retention plan at UNT," said Joneel Harris, interim associate vice president for enrollment management, when the enrollment numbers were released in September.

"Universitywide efforts have focused on retention of continuing students with special emphasis on new-from-high-school freshmen retention (up more than 4%) and managed growth of new students including freshmen, transfers, graduate and minority students across all categories," Harris said.

The coordinating board recently granted UNT permission to use the name UNT Dallas Campus for student recruitment, marketing and advertising purposes. The Center orginally was supported by a state appropriation of $4.2 million and was supplemented by $2.6 million raised by area business and civic leaders.

No new date

Despite the setback, Price remains optimistic that UNT Dallas will be a full campus by 2010. Meanwhile, the System Center offers 19 degree programs and plans to add more.


"We are still gathering input from the community about what should be included in the university, but everything remains in the initial stages, and we haven't targeted another date," Price said.

The concept of UNT Dallas received unanimous support in the House and Senate in the 2001 state Legislature and was championed by Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, as a way to address the public university needs of southern Dallas. UNT's proposal was chosen over proposals from the Texas A&M University System and Texas Tech University.

Last year, the Legislature approved an additional $2.25 million for the Center that raised its appropriation to $6.45 million for the 2002-03 biennium.

UNT officials expect to seek additional funding for both the Center and the proposed campus, but it's unlikely that any construction projects related to the proposed campus would receive funding when the next session begins Jan. 14.

"We have some financial issues we have to deal with within the state and in relation to the $5 billion budget shortfall," West said. "Everything else is pretty much on hold as we weather these financial times."

The location of the proposed campus, which would be the first state-supported public college to be entirely within the Dallas County limits, also drew criticism from Dallas Mayor Laura Miller during a recent meeting with Dallas Business Journal reporters and editors.

"I wish that the university had been envisioned for downtown," Miller said. "A downtown campus would have been really teriffic. With all the empty buildings we have downtown, we could have done something terrific."

Virginia Wheeless, vice chancellor of planning and former interim executive director of the Center, said a downtown campus would not fit with the traditional campus including dormitories that has been envisioned.

Plans are under way to raise funds to begin a master plan for UNT Dallas.

The city of Dallas last year purchased 202 acres in southeast Oak Cliff and deeded it to UNT for development of the proposed campus. Another 62 acres has been added through gifts and purchases.

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Can UNT fill Dallas campus?
Enrollment must reach 1,000 to be university; who qualifies debated
09:26 PM CST on Saturday, December 20, 2003
By LINDA K. WERTHEIMER / The Dallas Morning News
http://www.dallasnews.com/latestnews/stories/122103dnmetuntdallas.99d8.html

A tug of war has broken out between state higher-education officials and the University of North Texas over who should legitimately count as enrolled students at UNT's center in Dallas.

The squabble is the latest symptom of difficult times for state Sen. Royce West's dream of creating a university in southern Dallas County.

Mr. West, D-Dallas, has twice moved through a lower enrollment requirement to help the UNT at Dallas Campus center qualify for university status faster.

And since September 2002, the UNT System has repeatedly asked the state to broaden the way it counts students as the school strives for the lowered standards.

The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board has rejected almost all of UNT's requests, saying the university wants to cast an overly broad net in an attempt to artificially hit the required enrollment target by its goal of 2007.

Coordinating board officials, who along with the University of Texas at Arlington opposed the idea from the start, say the UNT center's ongoing struggles are further proof that the area has enough universities already.

"This is a major, major, major problem. They face a challenge," said Marshall Hill, an assistant commissioner at the coordinating board. "We all want them to be successful, but Dallas does not send a large number of students on to higher education, period."

UNT officials, meanwhile, say the state board is hindering progress by disallowing students from their count. Whether students are freshmen, online students or southern Dallas County residents taking classes in downtown Dallas, they demonstrate the need for a southern Dallas County school, they say.

"They've challenged us in everything we wanted to do," said UNT President Norval Pohl. "They come at it not with an objective mind. They say, 'We told you it wouldn't work.' There is a critical mass of students."

Under a change in the law signed by Gov. Rick Perry in June, the branch campus must enroll the equivalent of 1,000 full-time students in one fall semester before it can move ahead as a university.

Initially, the coordinating board's policy was that start-up universities should have 3,500 full-time students over several consecutive semesters. Mr. West, through legislation, changed that to 2,500, then to 1,000.

The idea of the enrollment target has been to make the school prove it can woo enough students to ultimately pay its own bills, and to prove the assertion that another university is needed in the region.

Mr. West and UNT officials say they remain optimistic that the campus, which opened at a business park in January 2000, will become a university on schedule in 2007. The university's initial customers will be upper division and graduate students only.

Mr. West said the impasse with the state reflects different approaches to the same goal.

The senator's view is: Build it, and they will come. Mr. West figures that if UNT builds an attractive campus, students will flock to it. State officials want to see an ample group of college-going students before investing money in a full university.

"Somewhere in the mix is going to be the solution," Mr. West said. "I think we'll get there by 2007."

Contrasting views


Correspondence between UNT and the state shows the contrasting views about what should illustrate need for a campus:

• In September 2002, UNT officials asked for permission to count students at UNT's main campus in Denton who take Internet classes at the Dallas center if those students were from southern Dallas County. The state denied that request.

• Since the system center opened, at least half the center's students have also been enrolled at UNT's Denton campus.

• In its fall 2003 enrollment data, UNT lists 494 full-time equivalent students, about halfway to the current goal. But coordinating board officials say that number has been inflated by the inclusion of 110 full-time Cedar Valley College students who take classes at the center because of a space shortage. The state is reviewing the count.

• In correspondence between August and November, UNT repeatedly asked for permission to count lower-division students, including those from Cedar Valley, as a part of the center's enrollment. The center's charter says it may offer only upper-level classes.

Coordinating board officials say the facts may show a lack of demand for a new university in Dallas, a concern that board staffers raised from the start. UTA, the closest public university to southern Dallas County, made the same case in 1998.

Dr. Brown said some of UNT's requests for counting students contradict the need for a full-fledged university. If UNT counts community college students, it's making the case for more community colleges, not another university, he said.

"I regularly say to them, 'We urge you to concentrate your efforts on generating new students who otherwise wouldn't be going to college or wouldn't be transferring to get their bachelor's or master's degree,' " Dr. Brown said.

John Ellis Price, the vice provost of UNT at Dallas and head of the center, said the state didn't have a written policy on counting enrollment for a future university when the center opened.

Dr. Price said he invited Cedar Valley to house classes at the center because he knew the college was short on space. He doesn't understand the fuss over counting those students because the center was allowed to count eight full-time UTA students taking master's level classes at the center.

"What difference does it make if it's upper or lower as long as you're showing educational need? To me, that's an artificial barrier," Dr. Price said.

Dr. Hill, of the commissioning board, said UNT must show the need for the group of students slated for the future UNT at Dallas – juniors, seniors and graduate students. When the new university opens, it could take years before freshmen and sophomores are allowed to enroll, he said.

After UNT raised the question about counting Web-based students from the center's geographical area, the coordinating board approved a policy forbidding that practice for centers vying to become universities.

"If they can be delivered over the Web, what's the use of building a campus to do that?" Dr. Hill asked.

UNT officials said that if there were a university in southern Dallas County, those students might choose the on-campus site versus their home computer. They also argue that Web-based instruction is part of a university's course menu.

"If they want to take numbers and make it seem like we're not making progress, fine," Dr. Price said. "I can take our numbers and show we are making substantial progress toward our goals."

Coordinating board officials said fiscal prudence motivated the denial of various counting requests.

Since 1999, the state has given UNT $16.69 million for the center's programs and allowed it to borrow $25 million for construction.

"It should not just be a convenience for people already in the higher-education pipeline," Dr. Hill said of the proposed UNT at Dallas. "This is a darned expensive bow to convenience, if that's all it is."

The smaller a state school, the harder it struggles, he and others said.

Since 1998, the state has given nine small universities $750,000 a year as subsidies because their tuition revenues won't cover costs; to date, nine universities qualify. The universities all have fewer than 5,000 students.

In late June, Mr. Perry expressed reservations about the rush to create so many universities as he signed bills authorizing lower enrollment requirements for UNT at Dallas and two other university centers. He said too many schools could dilute limited resources.

Attracting students


It's hard, however, for centers to show the full need of their area because of the rules governing them, Dr. Price said. Until they generate a certain number of students, centers can't hire their own professors and are beholden to existing universities. That makes it tough to offer enough courses to attract students, he said.

And a business park doesn't have the same draw as a campus. Construction at the new campus site will change that, Dr. Price said.

"It is going to tell the students, 'We're for real,' " he said.

The success or failure of UNT at Dallas may affect state policy, lawmakers and coordinating board members said.

In October, because of lawmakers' actions during the most recent legislative session, coordinating board members voted to endorse the previous model for future universities – a 3,500-student threshold. They wanted to reverse the trend Mr. West and others were creating.

"The thought was, 'Let's not just have universities pop up all around the state and then none of them have the resources to be the best,' " said Martin Basaldua, a coordinating board member.

But others, including lawmakers, said it's unlikely legislators will relinquish the ability to create universities in their own back yards.

Outgoing state Sen. Bill Ratliff, R-Mount Pleasant, sponsored a bill last session that made it easier for Texas A&M-Texarkana to add lower-division classes after years as an upper-division school. Constituents presented the case to expand the school, and Mr. Ratliff said he supported them against his own better judgment.

"I gave them a real lecture, saying: 'You folks don't understand. You're going to require major subsidies from the community to make this work,' " Mr. Ratliff said.

It was Mr. West who proposed lowering the enrollment target for the Dallas campus. He said his reasoning was that other universities have existed with as few as 1,000 students.

UNT officials, in interviews, said they don't believe 1,000 is enough for the financial stability of a university. Hence, next year, UNT will start raising money to begin an endowment to help the university when it does open, said UNT Chancellor Lee Jackson.

He said fall 2007 may be too ambitious for the opening, but UNT at Dallas ultimately will prosper because southern Dallas County residents have made it clear they want the school.

"I'm confident that 10 years from now, there will be enough enrollment on our campus to support a university," he said. "I'm pretty confident that in 20 years, we'll have 20,000 students."

Knajula Edwards, 20, of Cedar Hill wishes the proposed school were already here. A recent graduate of Tyler Junior College, she took two classes at the center this fall while working as a part-time teller at a nearby credit union.

But next semester, she will have to take some classes at UNT in Denton as well because the center doesn't offer everything she needs. She prefers to go to school as close to home as possible, but she said she'd do whatever necessary to finish her bachelor's degree.

"I see myself finishing at UNT regardless of where it is," she said.

E-mail lwertheimer@dallasnews.com

[Quiz03]

With the enrollment severely lagging here I know it isn't realistic in the short term, but I'd like the UNT system to be similar to the UofH system with several different campuses, including one in Ft Worth. Each one could have a different specialty, but still have a commitment to undergraduate education. These other schools could take the commuting pressure of the Denton campus and turn it into more of a residential campus. UNT has as much right to become the state's next flagship university as UH, TTU, or SWT (I refuse to dignify the name change).