JAMES LILLIN
Special to The Leader
Fredonia is currently stuck in the middle of a statewide collegiate crisis, where flagging enrollment is resulting in slashed budgets, thinned services and fired faculty. Over the past few years, enrollment at Fredonia has decreased by around 20 percent, according to Admissions, resulting in schoolwide deficits that are forcing the administration to take a multi-pronged approach to get us back on track.
Director of Admissions Cory Bezek explained that amidst nationwide protests over ballooning tuition prices, prospective students commonly feel that other factors than the cost of a degree are important in their college search.
“It’s no longer just about being a good value, it’s about what you are getting for that investment,” Bezek said.
Demographics are a huge issue to grapple with. After a consistent population boom through the past years, Bezek also said that New York State as a whole is losing high school graduates.
“The next time we’ll see an increase in high school graduates, pending some incoming migration of people into the state, we’re looking at the current first grade class, so another eleven years of demographic decline or stability,” he said.
Even simple things, like the weather, can be a significant factor. According to Bezek, a February open house last year took place on the coldest day recorded in Western New York in 72 years.
However, one way Fredonia is hoping to draw more students is through a complete redesigning of its scholarship model, increasing awards to $5 million (nearly double the previous amount), including a yearly renewable merit-based scholarship for any students maintaining a minimum grade point average of 2.8.
Although the price of attending Fredonia will see an overall increase next year, Bezek is optimistic about future students’ ability to afford college.
“The hope is that, at the end of the day, they’ll end up paying less out of pocket,” he said.
Fredonia is also the only New York State participant in the American Association of State Colleges and Universities’ “Re-Imagining the First Year of College” (RFY) program, a three year national initiative to “remake the first year of college to increase student success rates.”
“While there may be more significant change at the end of the three year period, we all understand the need to move the dial forward quickly and hope to see improvements each year along the way that support a steady increase in student success,” said Director of First-Year and Transition Programs Erin Mroczka.
The campus is also in the middle of a “Strategic Enrollment Management” self-study, which Mroczka said “is focusing on our current recruitment and retention practices, as well as creating new initiatives.”
One new initiative rising from this has been a new swath of smaller scale Accepted Students Receptions all across New York State. Mroczka said that these have been an overwhelmingly positive experience for prospective Fredonia freshmen.
“The students and families I have interacted with have been incredibly positive and appreciative of our efforts to make Fredonia personal to them,” she said.
History Department Chair and RFY team member Dr. Mary Beth Sievens said that faculty members are also attempting to meet and exceed their own programs’ enrollment and retention goals.
“Individual departments are reaching out to prospective students in many different ways, including letter-writing and phone campaigns,” she said.
The Admissions Department is also upping efforts to streamline communication and outreach to students in order to get back on target for enrollment.
“We’re trying to do it in a more efficient manner so students have the offer in hand before they even hear from other schools,” Bezek said.
Although we won’t know specific numbers until the National Deposit Deadline on May 1, Bezek is optimistic, saying “we’re closing strong,” and “looking good with deposits.”
All in all, Bezek is emphatic that although we want higher enrollment, “we’re absolutely not compromising on student quality.”
“At the end of the day, I’ve never lost sleep over denying a student. I lose sleep when I accept a student and see that they’ve failed out after a semester or a year,” Bezek said. “We’re a challenging, selective liberal arts environment with excellent standards, and that’s one thing that’s never going to change.”