USF Provost: St. Petersburg campus needs to do more to retain and graduate its students
With an ambitious goal of enrolling 650 students at the University of South Florida’s St. Petersburg campus in summer and fall 2021, USF Provost Ralph Wilcox said the school has to do a “much better” job at retaining its current students and helping them make it to graduation.
“As I’m sure you’ll agree, an 87 percent freshmen retention rate, a 45 percent four-year graduation rate and a 57 percent six-year graduation rate are frankly unacceptable,” Wilcox said at a Thursday meeting of the Campus Advisory Board. “Just imagine how many more students would be enrolled on the St. Petersburg campus and living in the residence halls if the retention rate over the last few years were in the 90 percent range, not in the 70s and 80s.”
Ralph Wilcox
In July, the three USF campuses consolidated into one unit, which meant that all students being admitted had to meet the same academic standards no matter what campus they chose to attend. And those standards are much higher than they used to be due to USF’s status as a preeminent research university. Wilcox acknowledged that students accepted four to six years ago prior to any mention of consolidation were “essentially admitted to a regional university” with a different mission and different goals and expectations.
“Absolutely we can and should recognize the need for some patience to move those earlier cohorts forward,” he said. “But for the freshman class enrolled in 2019, there’s no excuse for them to be retained at a significantly lower level than in Sarasota-Manatee or on the Tampa campus.”
The retention rate going forward for students admitted under the more stringent academic requirements will become clearer as time goes by. But existing numbers show that enrollment on the St. Petersburg campus has seen a “steady and disappointing” decline over the past three fall semesters, according to Wilcox, dropping from a total enrollment of 4,981 in 2017 to 3,878 in 2020.
For incoming freshmen, the numbers aren’t a lot better. In 2017, 402 first-time-in-college students started at the St. Petersburg campus in the fall. 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.
In light of the pandemic, USF’s St. Petersburg campus, along with schools across the country, will face additional challenges in terms of freshman enrollment in 2021. Glen Besterfield, dean of admissions and associate vice president, said application numbers are down by 26 percent compared to what they were a year ago at this time, which is possibly related to uncertainty about the future. Fewer applicants have taken the SATs or ACTs due to a limited number of testing centers being open, especially in South Florida where the impact of Covid-19 was more severe. Additionally, scores are down among those who have taken the tests, and student GPAs have been coming in lower as well.
At the same time, recruiting a more diverse student population – a top priority for USF – has also become more difficult due to the competition for the best and brightest, particularly when it comes to Black students. To that end, USF has rolled out a number of outreach efforts aimed at attracting more students to all three USF campuses, including one called the Guaranteed Admissions Partnership Program (GAPP) which has partnered with Boca Ciega, Dixie M. Hollins and Lakewood high schools to increase admissions opportunities for students from underserved populations.
Campus board member Lawrence Hamilton said that he’s concerned that these initiatives, while well intentioned, don’t focus enough on the unique needs of St. Petersburg students. He said the feedback he’s heard from school principals on GAPP is that the communication about the program comes too late for students to meet the deadline to apply.
“I’m just concerned that the programs and activities we’ve identified for access not only for minority students but all students haven’t done enough to convince me that we know enough about the St. Petersburg student,” he said. “I’m just not feeling really warm and fuzzy that 650 students for 2021 is going to occur.”
Administrators will be watching closely to see if that number can be met, and going forward, they’ll also be paying attention to how many of those students stick around.
“Until we improve student success on the St. Pete campus, I worry students will gravitate to those universities or campuses where they know they can be successful,” Wilcox said. “We don’t need high school guidance counselors or parents encouraging their students to set their preference at the Sarasota-Manatee campus or the Tampa campus rather than St. Pete because the perception is, and the data supports this perception, that students will be more successful at those two campuses. That’s going to be a detriment to progress.”
Both Wilcox and several board members acknowledged the challenges of “untangling the organizational structure” across the university in the wake of consolidation, and agreed more conversations need to happen to keep everyone on the same page.
“We have to align the colleges across all three campuses, and most importantly, we have to better align and streamline to ensure we are most effectively deploying the combined resources that we have to support student access and success on all three campuses to ensure satisfactory outcomes,” Wilcox said. “No one wants a situation where students on one campus are lagging performance on the other two campuses.”
Jinx Ashforth
October 23, 2020at8:23 am
Hello again. My calculator apparently was awake all night, looking up the definition for “gaslighting,” while I was fielding terrified calls from friends among the adjunct faculty who have just learned that there is no budget for their rehire in 2021. Not for ANY adjunct faculty in their divisions. At USF Tampa.
Now I’m no provost. But a local publication just quoted my provost as saying “we” — he; as that’s his job — “have to better align and streamline to ensure we are most effectively deploying the combined resources that we have to support student access and success.”
That’s fantastic to hear. Since I have a plan whereby we could keep employed or hire 100-200 faculty who actually depend on that income. Their arrival/retention would expand our course offerings and programs, contribute a greater diversity of expertises, increase publication rate towards USF’s goals of pre-eminence and R1 research status…all while creating a more personalized student-teacher ratio: all of which factors correlate* highly with student satisfaction, application, and retention.
At only $5,000 paid to adjunct faculty per graduate course they teach, and per-course compensation at about half that for those adjunct faculty who are teaching undergrads, USF could keep hundreds of employees afloat through unprecedented hardship *while* vastly improving success of students and the institution itself, across ALL campuses.
Hey, Wreck-It Ralph. Your salary of $477,479.00 could keep up to 200 people employed, and make all of USF a better place. If you really care about “streamlining” away the fat and ensuring “success” for all campuses by “most effectively deploying” our “combined resources,” then I’m sure you’ll do the noble thing and throw your own disproportionate resources back into the pot. If Raymond Burse could do it in less drastic times, I’m positive you can find the spine to disburse your own compensation now. We all really need it.
I’ll even lend you my calculator.
Marvin Hancock
October 23, 2020at6:30 am
As an alum of USFSP, and a teacher, I watched the board meeting to see if anyone would address the destruction of the USF college of education. The local county superintendent spoke, representing all of the superintendents in the Tampa Bay region. He was clear and succinct and raised a disturbing picture about the university decision to close the college of education undergraduate programs. USF leadership at the meeting failed to respond to his remarks with any due consideration. No mention of that in this article.
This article is also silent to the fact that the Provost, who is responsible for the academics of the entire university, dedicated his time to disparaging the Saint Petersburg campus for being three points below the USF retention goal (which the chancellor had mentioned as a remarkable climb over the past three years ) rather than the fact that he has control of all academics within USF. If there are problems with enrollment or colleges or budgets, it is his responsibility. I think what he focused on in his remarks is called blaming the victim?
Also, his remarks completely ignored what one board-member brought up about all university admissions being under Tampa control for the past 2 1/2 years, which seems to be exactly when USFSP‘s enrollment started it’s precipitous decline. Nothing in the article about that.
I think your article only addresses what the Provost wanted everyone to hear. And as someone who follows very closely what is happening with consolidation, I think we need a new bumper sticker for people in St. Petersburg to put on their car. It could read “The beatings will continue until we are one USF. “
Jinx Ashforth
October 22, 2020at7:30 pm
Hey, y’all. USFSP double-masters alum here. I was privileged to take journalistic ethics from the legend, Dr. Deni Elliot. So I’ve got this thing about fair reporting. From what I recall from auditing the meeting, the tasmanian devil at the end wasn’t the star of the show. The encouraging facts about USFSP, were.
Do I misremember? Because y’all got me really inclined to go back and watch the thing again. This characterization is making me think that I’ve developed memory loss at my tender age of 42.
I had *thought* I’d heard the USFSP chancellor state that the USFSP progress rate for students is at 86.9 percent, while USF as a whole is 90.3. So, “close and gaining.” I’m no numberatologist, but my calculator they gave me with my MBA in the Kate Tiedemann College of Business tells me 86.9% is a dramatic improvement over 2017-2018, when the USFSP rate was 73 percent.
To my memory Tadlock also said that the USFSP first to second-year retention rate is at 86.9%. That number is a less big number than USF’s number of 92.3. But a much larger one than our 2017-2018 stats, when USFSP was at 75.9%. That’s what my incredible econ professor Richard Smith taught me is known as a “real positive trend.”
In short: that’s damned impressive. Especially to a campus recently smacked during those “recent years” to figure out the forced marriage of Consolidation.
So. I don’t think Wreck-It Ralph has the right of it. Not by far.
Anyone else dig facts and ethics around here? Or is it just the me-and-my calculator twins against whoever comes in last and loudest? Because, like, I’m a Boston Sicilian and if it’s a volume war instead of intellect, ethics, and actual facts, I’m glad to put my four USF degrees down and raise my own voice.