Pictured Above: “I’m just not feeling really warm and fuzzy” that the campus will hit its target of 650 new first-time-in-college freshmen in 2021, said board member Lawrence Hamilton (left). Member Susan Churuti said the board needs a workshop to discuss “some of the things that we’re hearing from the community.”
Courtesy of USF
By Nancy McCann
Under pressure from legislators to increase USF St. Petersburg’s badly sagging enrollment next year, administrators promised to address the issue at the Oct. 22 meeting of the St. Petersburg Campus Advisory Board.
But while the board heard a lot about USF’s outreach and recruiting efforts, administrators had few specifics on how they plan to reach legislators’ goal of 650 first-time-in-college freshmen in St. Petersburg in the summer and fall of 2021.
That didn’t seem to sit well with at least two of the seven board members.
“It didn’t feel as if the presentation focused on what the needs were in St. Petersburg,” said Lawrence Hamilton, an executive coach and adjunct faculty member with the Center for Creative Leadership affiliate at Eckerd College. “I’m just not feeling really warm and fuzzy that the 650 in 2021 is going to occur.”
Board member Susan Churuti, a St. Petersburg lawyer and property manager, said the board needs to have a work session “to address Lawrence’s issues” and discuss “some of the things that we’re hearing from the community.”
In an interview with The Crow’s Nest later, Churuti said “the community recognizes that our revenue for budget purposes is tied to enrollment so, theoretically, if the enrollment is starved, then the budget will have to decrease.”
She also said she has “heard a lot of disappointment (in the community) in the (enrollment) numbers dropping, and particularly the number of minorities dropping.”
Glen Besterfield, USF’s dean of admissions, told the board the administration is still “putting together plans” on how to bring St. Petersburg’s new freshman enrollment up to 650 in 2021. That may involve redirecting “certain groups of students to the St. Pete campus,” he said.
Since 2016, when USF St. Petersburg was independent, the number of summer and fall first-time-in-college freshmen in St. Petersburg has plunged from 647 to 386 this year – a number that administrators boosted this summer by moving 109 Tampa-bound students to St. Petersburg.
The startling drop has drawn the attention of the powerful Pinellas County legislators who led the move to strip USF St. Petersburg of its independence in 2018. They have signaled that they are displeased by the enrollment decline and the way consolidation is unfolding.
On Oct. 8, Rep. Chris Sprowls, R-Palm Harbor – the incoming speaker of the Florida House of Representatives – and Sen. Jeff Brandes, R-St. Petersburg, announced that the USF administration and trustees are “committed to growing enrollment” in St. Petersburg, with “a strong goal of 650” new freshmen for 2021.
Brandes has also told The Crow’s Nest that university leaders are violating the letter and spirit of consolidation-related statutes and warned that legislators may take action to replace some members of the 13-member Board of Trustees.
The push to increase enrollment comes amid growing criticism from legislators and community leaders that USF’s administrators and trustees are stifling St. Petersburg in the implementation of consolidation.
The criticism went unmentioned at the meeting of the Campus Advisory Board, seven Pinellas County residents who help oversee operations on the St. Petersburg campus.
Instead, Provost Ralph Wilcox blamed St. Petersburg’s declining enrollment on a drop in the number of applications from high school students. He said it “had everything to do with fewer qualified students applying to USF . . . and fewer qualified students identifying St. Petersburg as their preferred home campus.”
Early in the planning for consolidation, administrators predicted that higher admission standards for the singly accredited university would reduce enrollment in St. Petersburg as soon as the campus’ targets for SAT and ACT test scores and high school GPAs were raised in 2018.
When it was independently accredited, USF St. Petersburg served a student population that didn’t always blend with Tampa’s ambition to become a preeminent state research university.
One of St. Petersburg’s priorities was to be a four-year university that was accessible to high schools in the community, with a curriculum and support for many different types of students.
Many in St. Petersburg expected a plan to maintain enrollment at USF St. Petersburg and preserve the campus identity under single accreditation. Now legislators have stepped in – for the third time since they passed consolidation legislation – to protect the downtown campus.
Wilcox made it clear at the board meeting that, even with the commitment to have 650 new freshmen next year in St. Petersburg, preeminence status is the key.
“While we’re very much committed to increasing the number of new students at USF St. Petersburg campus in the coming year, it is important that we enroll students who have demonstrated scholarly aptitude to succeed” at a preeminent university, he said.
Wilcox and other Tampa-based administrators dominated Thursday’s meeting with a string of presentations, allowing little time for the board members to speak and ask questions.
During the meeting, Churuti said she was “very disappointed” that she didn’t receive a copy of the university’s consolidation self-study report, which is due to the regional accrediting agency on Dec. 14.
“I asked for that to be distributed before the campus board meeting to the campus board members . . . we should at least be able to see what it says,” Churuti said. “It’s already a public record.
“Whatever its current form is, I’d like to see that sometime in the next seven days . . . so we don’t have these surprises.”
Churuti said later that she learned about St. Petersburg’s freshman enrollment problems from The Crow’s Nest, not the administration.
St. Petersburg’s lagging numbers come at a great cost to the campus at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic has staggered the revenue picture at most of America’s colleges and universities.
USF is under orders from the state to cut its state budget by 8.5 percent this fiscal year, with further cuts expected next year. Last week the university announced it is closing the College of Education and transitioning to a school for education graduate students – a move that will save $6.8 million over two years.
At a St. Petersburg campus forum on Oct. 20, Regional Chancellor Martin Tadlock and Nick Setteducato, the interim regional vice chancellor and chief financial officer, said the dramatic decline in enrollment numbers is hurting the campus’ financial picture.
Three or four years ago, tuition revenue constituted half of the campus’ revenue, Setteducato said. Now it’s only 31 percent.
He said he’s “optimistic” that next year’s target of 650 new freshmen at the St. Petersburg campus can be met.
“We are waiting for that plan” to pull up enrollment numbers, Setteducato said. “I think it (the plan) wasn’t done because the focus wasn’t there, and now the focus will be there.”
If St. Petersburg can get 650 first-time-in-college freshmen next year, Tadlock said, “that relieves a lot of the anxiety and sleepless nights I’ve been having for two years now.”
