OT: Iowa, the Nick Saban of Universities?
An interesting article in the NY Times about Iowa ending up with about 400 extra Freshman than it planned. Admissions is a difficult job, because inevitably, a large portion of the admitted students will choose other schools. It kind of seems similar to coaches over signing recruits attempting to predict attrition. At least the incoming Iowa students aren't having their admissions rescinded.
The university does not expect to have much trouble adding smaller discussion groups to accommodate the incoming freshmen taking big, introductory lecture courses like Rhetoric, which is essentially English 101. Housing all the incoming students, though, has been the biggest challenge. With each freshman entitled to campus housing, several hundred students transferring from community and other colleges will most likely be given beds in newly commissioned, off-campus apartments or renovated dorm lounges.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/04/education/04admissions.html?_r=1&hp
I used to work for UofM's housing office when I was at Michigan. There was at least one year when UofM faced a similar problem. For whatever reason, a larger than expected portion of admitted students accepted their admission, leaving the housing office having to find beds for everyone. I remember them turning dorm lounges into 4 person rooms and renting apartments (and I think a few hotel rooms) for transfers, grad students, and upper classmen. Trying to estimate how many people will accept admission has got to be a pretty tough job.
Both lounges on my floor freshman year had kids dorming in them. Said kids were not that happy about the situation.
I don't know why they would be unhappy. I spent my freshmen year in a lounge in Bursley and it was awesome.
Shockingly, not everyone likes living in a lounge. :)
I guess. It's just that my room was 5 times bigger than the standard double(Admittedly with 4 people) and we could play epic nerf basketball games. To each is own though
I was put in a lounge in Markley that was converted to a triple.
Ugh - you'd think the pain of having to live out in Markley would be enough...
Markley was awesome. Yeah it was a bit of a walk to the party scene but it was a pretty wild time there.
It's just too far from everything. At that point you're almost better off in Bursley. Almost.
What if you're underage and want to buy from that crazy cock-eyed son of a bitch at Strickland's? It's just a hop, skip, and a jump for Markley students.
+1 for Markley.
There used to be a Facebook group called, "I lived in Markley so I know how sweet it is not to live there anymore."
It was, if nothing else, quite an experience. Thankfully I wasn't there during the crazy Norovirus outbreak.
upperclassmen an incentive (e.g. reduced tuition) to find their own housing.
It's called getting laid.
I did my undergrad at Toledo and this same thing happened in 2000. I also knew someone who went to Ohio University and the same thing happened to them (2003, I think).
This is more akin to airline scheduling than it is to Saban's practices. Airlines and universities need to be filled to a certain level in order to keep costs down for everybody. I.e., it is a benefit to accepted students that they make more offers to students than there are actual slots. They are trying to meet their capacity.
In contrast, Saban is intentionally over-recruiting and then forcing players out.
Is called "yield management". Airlines, hotels, rental car companies, just about everyone does it now. Its a way of optimizing capacity utilization.
Even non-sports stuff. Thanks.
Speaking of which, North Quad (né the Frieze Building) is up and running and looks amazing. That's clearly going to be the dorm of choice for U-M students.*
*dowdy Martha Cook girls excepted
It's a little disorienting to think that the absolutely nasty building I had a couple classes in not only no longer exists, but its replacement is one of the finest buildings on campus.
Can you say freshman in northwood
Yeah, even in the past few years, at least in South Quad, they've been shifting around how lounges and triples were used from year to year.
It was definitely around in '03 when I moved in there. I was in a "triple" that was a double the year before and our lounge was turned into a quad (though one kid moved out so it became and enormous triple).
Coming from a somewhat more conservative and definitely more Southern school than U-M, the issue of the year in my first year at UVA was not too many students, but too many male students and not enough male floors in the dorms, resulting in female RAs on male floors. Scandalizing. The cartoons in the paper made the whole situation hilariously worth it.
This happens at all kinds of places. It is hard to predict who is going to accept your offer of admission. Universities do all kinds of modeling but it can still be a crapshoot unless you use your waitlist process to carefully creep up to your target number. And yes, U-M has this problem this year.
Academically, U-M has to scramble to add sections; I believe chemistry (due to lab space demands) and spanish (because of the need to find instructors) are the toughest challenges for the U.
Housing is usually the biggest headache, at least if a dorm is offline for renovation like now. U-M has a list of options, ranked in order of desirability, and it deploys them as needed and as appropriate given the class and circumstances.
For example, they convert lounges into rooms, and convert doubles to triples (as was mentioned). They can also incent returning undergrads to give up their housing contracts and move off campus. Or move to apartments like Northwood to give up their dorm rooms. They can also put new students in Oxford. They can rent space from the builders who are flooding the market with these big new student apartment buildings. They can rent hotel rooms.
There are pluses and minuses to all these things, and I just thank the baby jesus that I'm not the person trying to make these decisions and field the phone calls from distressed parents and students.
If Iowa was the Nick Saban of universities 400 upperclassmen would be looking for a place to transfer.
theres a ton of freshmen being put in northwood and a bunch of northwood residents got bumped (though they are handsomely rewarded for the inconvenience)
August 4th, 2010 at 11:30 AM ^
Are you sure about that? Freshmen in Northwood would be a big departute in policy for the U.
What they have done in the past is moved sophomores, juniors, and seniors out of residence halls and into Northwood, freeing up room in the more traditional halls.