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As enrollment declines in the wake of consolidation, USF St. Petersburg’s campus looks for solutions

Jaymi Butler

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USF St. Pete
Photo: USF

Despite the Covid-19 pandemic and all the uncertainty surrounding it, the University of South Florida welcomed more than 5,800 freshmen to its three campuses as part of its summer and fall cohort, a nearly 5 percent increase over the previous year. 

Not only was USF’s freshman class larger, it was also more diverse, with the percentage of Black students rising by 1.3 percent and Hispanic students by 18 percent. Academically, the incoming class excelled as well, with an average high school GPA of 4.18 and SAT score of 1312.

“USF’s national reputation for meaningful research, academic excellence and student success continues to attract exceptionally talented students,” USF president Steve Currall said in September.

But across the bay at USF’s St. Petersburg campus, which consolidated with the Tampa and Sarasota-Manatee campuses in July, the numbers have caused some concern. 

According to USF fall-only enrollment data, freshman enrollment has been dropping over the last several years. In 2017, 402 first-time-in-college students started at the St. Petersburg campus. That number has fallen to 157 in 2020. There’s only one Black student in this year’s fall freshman class, and just 25 Hispanic students. When summer and fall numbers are added together, which is the benchmark USF uses for its incoming freshman classes, the number rises to 421, with 18 Black and 91 Hispanic students. 

Still, the lower numbers, which have had a $2.8 million impact on the school’s budget this fiscal year according to Regional Chancellor Martin Tadlock, have triggered alarm bells for local leaders who have long considered the St. Pete campus as a point of pride for the community and an accessible avenue for Pinellas County students seeking higher education. Even state Sen. Jeff Brandes and state Rep. Chris Sprowls, the two legislators who spearheaded the consolidation efforts despite a sustained public outcry against it, expressed concern about enrollment. In a tweet earlier this month, Sprowls said the Board of Trustees and administration at USF has “assured us of their commitment to growing enrollment at USF St. Petersburg with a strong goal of 650 students for next year’s class.”

More specifics on how that will be accomplished will be discussed at Thursday’s meeting of the Campus Advisory Board. Mayor Rick Kriseman, who has been outspoken in his criticism of the consolidation, will be listening closely, especially as it relates to increasing diversity.

“We’ve got one African American student in this last group of admitted students,” he said in a recent interview with the Catalyst. “That’s a real concern for us because it’s making it difficult for college to be accessible and attainable for kids here in this community, especially those of color, and I’m really hoping that somehow in some way that it’s addressed.”

A predicted, but unwelcome, enrollment outcome 

In pre-consolidation days, USF’s St. Petersburg campus had its own admissions office and its own recruiters who would fan out across the state to encourage high school students to attend the intimate waterfront campus. That changed about two-and-a-half years ago, when admissions became USF’s first consolidated area and began operating under the control of the Tampa campus, Tadlock said. Now, the St. Pete campus employs just two recruiters, and their sole responsibility is outreach for students who have indicated an interest in coming to the school. 

“We don’t go out and do the traditional marketing, communication and recruiting effort that we did prior to consolidation,” he said. 

The loss of an independent admissions office coupled with higher academic standards for incoming freshmen spelled trouble for enrollment numbers, which Tadlock said were to be expected.

“Everyone knew there would be an initial decline as a result of consolidation and the changing of admission requirements and the elevation of the student profile,” he said. “We anticipated it would take a couple of years to turn the corner and bring that back around. I don’t know how much Covid is to blame for that, but you’ve got the largest number of incoming first-time-in-college students this fall you’ve ever had [in Tampa] so I don’t see that Covid really is the reason we don’t have the student numbers here.”

While Tadlock doesn’t have a definitive answer to why St. Pete campus numbers are down so much, he does have a few theories.

“People are still of the mindset that if you’re going to college, you start in the summer or fall full time, and if you don’t get into one school, you go on to another one,” he said. “Students don’t consider all the other paths we’ve created.”

One such program is Pinellas Access to Higher Education (PATHe). The program, which started in 2018 as a partnership between St. Petersburg College and the St. Pete campus, is aimed at expanding educational access and helping local students who want to earn a college degree. Students enrolled in PATHe will get assistance applying to SPC, where they can earn their Associate’s Degree. Then, they’ll be able to seamlessly transfer to USF’s St. Pete campus. Another partnership program with SPC, FUSE, guarantees admission for eligible students into select programs at USF once they complete their associate’s degree. Both PATHe and FUSE offer significant academic support and resources to ensure student success.

While these options are available for students who are willing to start at SPC and then transfer to USF, they don’t solve the problem of the all-important metric of freshmen enrollment. Tadlock speculates that many high school students who have their hearts set on attending a four-year school may have the perception that admission to USF is off the table for them due to the more stringent academic requirements. Conversely, he said, high-achieving students have lots of options on where to attend school and they get recruited heavily by top-notch institutions across the country.

“USF has to be very competitive in terms of scholarships and financial support to be able to compete in that market and they’re just not quite there yet,” Tadlock said. “There are only so many 4.1 GPA students to go around and everyone is after them.”

But USF must find a way to get the numbers back up on the St. Petersburg campus, Tadlock said. 

“We have to see a turnaround in the enrollment and the diversity of our pool of students to reflect the diversity of our community,” he said. “That has to be first.”

If that doesn’t happen, Tadlock said, USF’s St. Petersburg campus will continue to lose out on tuition revenue and resources needed to bring in new programs and faculty members.

“It’s a pretty difficult position to be in right now,” Tadlock said.

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2 Comments

2 Comments

  1. Avatar

    Rose Smith-Hayes

    October 22, 2020at8:36 pm

    Change for the University was not best for the students. What is more important???

  2. Avatar

    Rebecca Johns

    October 22, 2020at6:21 am

    Unless the campus is allowed to recruit actively this problem will not go away. Gutting campus specific recruitment and limiting what recruiters can say about the benefits of the St. Pete campus is part of the problem. One has to wonder what Tampa administrators were thinking.

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