UM seeks grad students

At his State of the University address last Friday, University of Montana President George Dennison said he would like to increase graduate student enrollment at UM and Montana State University, consequently restricting the number of undergraduates admitted to the two universities.

Dennison said enhancing graduate enrollments and developing new funding methods that would include targeted enrollment is on this academic year’s agenda.

His reasoning behind enhancing UM’s graduate enrollment is a “direct correlation” between economic development and graduate enrollments and research.

Dennison encouraged the development of a plan to incrementally increase UM’s graduate enrollments as early as next fall.
In a Tuesday interview, Dennison said a greater graduate population at UM would likely necessitate restricting the number of undergraduate students.
“You can’t just let everything grow, there has to be some limitation,” Dennison said.
Increasing the graduate population is just one facet of a plan to change the student makeup of UM, said Provost Royce Engstrom.
On Monday, Engstrom said UM has an ongoing discussion concerning the school’s “optimal student make-up.” The university, Engstrom said, is headed toward increasing graduate enrollment and out-of-state enrollment. Also, UM is exploring the possibility of revising admissions standards to ensure admitted students are “a good match here,” he said.
Dennison’s speech addressed the “enrollment volatility” on all Montana campuses as the state’s high school graduation rate is expected to continually decrease in the future. He later said that enhancing graduate programs at UM and MSU, and limiting the institutions’ undergraduate enrollment would increase enrollments at Montana’s baccalaureate and two-year higher education institutions. Students who don’t meet UM and MSU’s increased standards would be encouraged to attend other schools, such as MSU-Northern or a college of technology, at the start of their academic careers and could reapply as transfer students once they matched the new qualifications.
On Monday, Associate Provost Arlene Walker-Andrews said tighter admissions standards would ensure that UM is admitting students with the right combination of test scores and GPA to succeed. 
While studying admission standards in early 2000, physics professor James Jacobs said he found “a compelling case” in the stark difference between graduation rates of students who met all admission qualifications and provisional students. Provisionally admitted students lack either a GPA or test score above Montana University System standards.
Revision of admissions standards and sending students who would now be admitted provisionally to other higher education institutions would likely support UM’s goals for higher retention and lower attrition rates. Dennison said new standards would create a “higher assuredness” that students would graduate.
Dennison, Engstrom and Walker-Andrews all stressed the gradual nature of changing the composition of UM’s student population and revising admissions standards. Walker-Andrews specifically said standards must gradually transform so students in their primary education know what Montana universities expect for admission.
Vice President for Administration and Finance Bob Duringer said the university will take the next major step to fulfill the president’s proposals after this fall’s Board of Regents meetings in September and November. “We can actually get this out for more discussion,” he said.
UM’s potential enrollment programs create a “very complicated financial picture,” Duringer said. If the president’s idea goes forward after a positive response from the regents, he said UM would most likely propose a redistribution of Montana’s higher education funding during the 2009 legislative session.
Duringer said only 10 percent of UM’s functioning budget comes from state funding. With new programs, he said, UM would seek a larger portion of the “lump sum” allocated to higher education by the legislature.
Duringer said the enrollment and admissions aspects of the president’s address intrigued him.
“We’ve been doing the same thing for a long time and this is a really interesting and creative proposal,” Duringer said.