Gulf Coast Update - USM Forum -- Message Board

Date: Dec 7, 2005

Gulf Coast Update

Date: Dec 7, 2005

An interesting wrinkle on the Coast: the administration's claim of 1600 students being enrolled this term. This has been reported in a couple of places, the Printz, I think, and the Sun-Herald.

Although there's been no public discussion of this--in clear contrast to the hullabaloo raised over The Toad's "We're bigger than MSU" gambit last year--almost everyone in the know realizes that this figure is vastly inflated. The figure of 1600 includes all sorts of ghost enrollments: people who had registered for classes before the storm who never dropped, for instance. (It's a bit morbid to speculate about this, I guess, since some of these technically still-enrolled students might actually be dead.)

The enrollment has also been inflated by counting a student each time he enrolls in a USM course at a satellite campus. In other words, a student who enrolled in a course at USM-Jackson County, and a course at the USM Garden Park building would count as TWO students. If this student were also to take an online course he would count as THREE.

Has anybody else gotten close to this?

Date: Dec 7, 2005

Is there a way to get enrollment by unique EMPL? This other method is soooo bogus.
(I just had a vision of my old IR boss, Mary Gardner Gruenewald, or "Mrs. Accuracy" and her reaction to such shenanigans!)

Date: Dec 7, 2005

Coast Watcher wrote:

An interesting wrinkle on the Coast: the administration's claim of 1600 students being enrolled this term. This has been reported in a couple of places, the Printz, I think, and the Sun-Herald. Although there's been no public discussion of this--in clear contrast to the hullabaloo raised over The Toad's "We're bigger than MSU" gambit last year--almost everyone in the know realizes that this figure is vastly inflated. The figure of 1600 includes all sorts of ghost enrollments: people who had registered for classes before the storm who never dropped, for instance. (It's a bit morbid to speculate about this, I guess, since some of these technically still-enrolled students might actually be dead.)

The enrollment has also been inflated by counting a student each time he enrolls in a USM course at a satellite campus. In other words, a student who enrolled in a course at USM-Jackson County, and a course at the USM Garden Park building would count as TWO students. If this student were also to take an online course he would count as THREE. Has anybody else gotten close to this?

Date: Dec 7, 2005

Coast Watcher wrote:

The enrollment has also been inflated by counting a student each time he enrolls in a USM course at a satellite campus. In other words, a student who enrolled in a course at USM-Jackson County, and a course at the USM Garden Park building would count as TWO students. If this student were also to take an online course he would count as THREE. Has anybody else gotten close to this?

The question should be "hasn't anybody learned what happens when enrollment is inflated?"

Date: Dec 7, 2005

Googler wrote:

The question should be "hasn't anybody learned what happens when enrollment is inflated?"

A 1-year appointment extension?

Date: Dec 7, 2005

LVN wrote:

Is there a way to get enrollment by unique EMPL? This other method is soooo bogus.
(I just had a vision of my old IR boss, Mary Gardner Gruenewald, or "Mrs. Accuracy" and her reaction to such shenanigans!)

Considering how IHL goes about funding universities, the double-counting is simply how it's done. Were IHL to move to a strict, across-the-board FTE-based formula using standard denominators (12 credit hours for undergrads & 9 hours for graduate students), the enrollment numbers issued by all Mississippi universities would mean something. Right now, one cannot compare enrollments between universities -- or in the case of USM, between campuses -- much less between universities & community colleges.