A Stunning Decline

As St. Petersburg prepares for consolidation, freshman enrollment has plunged. That was expected and won’t last long, university administrators say. But one faculty leader looks at the numbers and sees potential predicaments for the campus

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Tale of the numbers

The number of first-time-in-college freshmen entering USF St. Petersburg in the fall semester declined in 2018 and then nosedived in 2019.

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By Nancy McCann

Freshman enrollment at USF St. Petersburg – including the number of minority students – has plummeted since the campus began raising its admission requirements to comply with the new expectations of consolidation.

From 2018 to 2019, the number of first-time-in-college freshmen entering in the fall semester fell from 368 to 178, a dramatic drop of 52 percent.

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USF Tampa and USF St. Petersburg first-time-in-college freshmen

As the university raises admissions requirements, the student profile it uses – the average high school GPA of all FTIC freshmen along with the average SAT or ACT test score – has risen. On the St. Petersburg campus, the profile numbers have climbed sharply since 2016. In both St. Petersburg and Tampa, the profile numbers for students entering in the summer are lower than the numbers for students entering in the fall.

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The number of FTIC white students fell from 225 to 134, the number of black students from 14 to five, the number of Hispanic students from 86 to 26 and the number of Asian students from  10 to 5. (Other minority categories are not included.)

Just two years ago, in the fall of 2017, St. Petersburg had 400 FTIC freshmen. There were 231 white students, 31 black students, 80 Hispanic students and 13 Asian students.

Some university leaders say the stunning drop is not cause for alarm.

They call it a fully expected consequence of consolidation and predict that the numbers will rebound as the admissions process – already unified across the three campuses – is refined.

In fact, when the Tampa campus raised its admission standards for students entering in 2011, its freshman enrollment numbers fell sharply before bouncing back within a couple of years, said Paul Dosal, the USF system vice president for student success.

But others are not so confident.

One of them is history professor Ray Arsenault, who as president of the St. Petersburg Faculty Senate has warned for months that the Legislature’s abrupt decision to abolish the campus’ separate accreditation and merge the three campuses might rip apart the fabrics that have made St. Petersburg distinctive.

“These numbers look catastrophic, and it seems to me that anybody who sees them should be concerned,” said Arsenault, who said he had not seen the numbers until The Crow’s Nest provided them.

“I hope that Chancellor (Martin) Tadlock is right that the numbers will come back up.”

In fact, Tadlock says, it’s “way too early” to talk about enrollment numbers.

He said it’s complicated, because the “whole picture” includes factors like spring, summer and part-time enrollment, transfer and part-time students, veterans and adult learners, Pell grants and racial and gender breakdown.

“I’m glad to talk about those kinds of things right now, but numbers . . . far too early and narrow,” he said.

However, Tadlock does like to talk about numbers for retention rates, which he recently called “remarkable news.”

The projected freshman retention rate for students who entered USF St. Petersburg in the fall of 2018 is over 82 percent.  (The “retention rate” is the percentage of a school’s first-year undergraduates who continue at that school the next year.)

The national average retention rate is 75 percent, Tadlock said.

At issue in the plunge in freshman enrollment is a sudden shift in the mission of the little university along Bayboro Harbor.

For decades, St. Petersburg took pride in being a campus that embraced non-traditional and minority students, especially students who lived in Pinellas County.

If those students had borderline high school scores, wanted to experiment and change majors, and took longer to earn their degrees, that was acceptable.

But now, with consolidation pending, the St. Petersburg and Sarasota-Manatee campuses must improve their metrics in student admission requirements, retention and graduation rates, research spending, and other academic yardsticks.

Those are the metrics that enabled USF Tampa to become one of three “preeminent research institutions” in the state university system in 2018.

Keeping that distinction is now the top priority of Tampa administrators and the university system’s Board of Trustees.

The start of change

St. Petersburg started to raise its admissions requirements in 2018, shortly before Pinellas County legislators sprang their surprise move to consolidate the three campuses of USF – which enjoyed separate accreditation – into one.

The mandate to consolidate, which was signed into law in March 2018, made getting into USF St. Petersburg even harder. 

Dosal, the USF system’s vice president for student success, said that it’s important to look at any student numbers with a broader view, especially on the subject of diversity.

“I’m having trouble wrapping my head around the assumption that a higher academic profile necessarily means lower diversity because that has not been our experience in Tampa,” he said.

“Back in 2008, probably only 25 percent of our total undergraduate population would have identified as an underrepresented minority,” Dosal said. “Today it’s probably 43 percent, and all the while increasing our SAT scores.”

He said part of the explanation for this achievement is the multiple pathways to a degree that the campus provides. 

Patricia Helton, the St. Petersburg campus’ regional vice chancellor of student affairs and student success, agreed with Dosal.

“I think a problem we are having right now (in St. Petersburg) is that some students think the standards are so high they are not even applying,” she said. “We have to get out there with our admissions staff to let them know there are a lot of pathways to get in.

“It doesn’t have to be the fall FTIC (first-time-in-college) group. There’s summer, spring, transfer, the PATHe program.”

PATHe, which stands for “Pinellas Access to Higher Education,” is a partnership between St. Petersburg College and USF St. Petersburg that was founded in 2018.

The program starts students at SPC, where they earn an associate degree, then guides them into USF St. Petersburg for a bachelor’s. Students in PATHe get small class sizes, personalized attention and financial aid or scholarships.

There are 55 students in the PATHe program right now, Helton said.

Predictors of success

One of the metrics for maintaining preeminence status requires fall semester incoming freshmen to have an average weighted grade point average of 4.0 or higher. (A weighted average includes points added by the high school to account for more difficult classes, resulting in GPAs that can be above 4.0.)

Glen Besterfield, USF dean of admissions and associate vice president of student success, said that high school GPAs are the best predictors of student success in college, while ACT and SAT scores are “pretty good” indicators.

“They were admitting students in St. Pete with very low GPAs,” he said. “There are other ways to go. We guarantee admission with an A.A. Get your feet on the ground; that’s a beautiful path.”

Besterfield said that USF (including all three campuses) does not admit freshmen who have a weighted high school GPA below 3.0, with some exceptions for those with a “special talent” in athletics, dance, theater and other programs.

Students who are not offered admission to USF St. Petersburg are encouraged to participate in pathway programs that start in community college and guarantee admission to the university if they satisfy certain requirements.

The Community Scholars program provides special advising and a $1,000 scholarship if the student obtains at least a 2.5 GPA in their community college coursework. FUSE is a partnership between USF and eight Florida colleges for specific majors. 

The dramatic drop in freshman enrollment at USF St. Petersburg also means declines in tuition revenues and the Activities and Services student fees used to finance student organizations like Student Government, clubs and The Crow’s Nest.

At an August faculty and staff meeting in St. Petersburg, Nick Setteducato, the campus’  interim regional vice chancellor and chief financial officer, reported in his 2019-20 budget overview that there was an “anticipated reduction of approximately $400,000 in tuition revenue” due to lower freshman enrollment.

“The good thing about (the $400,000 reduction) is that the year before, we anticipated a drop and made adjustments to prepare for it,” Setteducato said in a Nov. 21 interview.

Arsenault said he is concerned about these lower revenues on top of other issues that the plunge in freshman numbers represents.

“We worked for years to expand our faculty and offer full-fledged programs,” Arsenault said.

“When there’s a shortfall, one thing it threatens is the size and overall quality of our faculty. Any adjustments to the budget could really hurt us.

“It’s all happening so fast,” he said. “It’s difficult to keep up with it.”

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What they’re saying

Ray Arsenault, history professor and president of the USF St. Petersburg Faculty Senate:

“Historically one of the great things about this campus is that you could make programmatic arguments and it was not always based on metrics or the bodies in the seats. But that’s what we’ve moved toward.

“You need to leave some room for smaller programs, such as in the humanities, to give the intellectual balance unless you want to turn the whole college campus into a business or science institution.

“The university is not a business. It’s an intellectual institution, and that’s what we are straining over.”

Paul Dosal, USF system vice president for student success:

“The principles we have been following are that we are no longer recruiting just to provide access to the university.  Now we are funded on performance.  In 2010, we shifted to a new approach.

“We want you to get in, and stay, and graduate in a timely way.  So that’s behind what we refer to as the reset of admissions standards in St. Petersburg and Sarasota. We are eager to see St. Pete’s numbers go up as they improve in performance.”

Patricia Helton, USF St. Petersburg regional vice chancellor of student affairs and student success:

“It’s difficult for the numbers to tell the complete freshman enrollment story. If you had interest, did you apply and complete your application?  Did you get admitted? Did you get denied? 

“What exactly has happened?  It’s virtually impossible to gather all that data and dig that deep.”