 "Photo: Graph by Nick Kneer/ IC")
Tuesday marked the "Fifteenth Day" for universities in Ohio when official enrollment numbers are tallied and state subsidies are given out accordingly.
Three colleges at the University of Toledo, the Judith Herb College of Education, College of Nursing and College of Business Administration, have raised their admissions standards.
As a result, the full–time equivalency of undergraduate and graduate student population has decreased by nearly 0.2 percent, declining from 19,622 last fall to 19,589 this semester.
Overall general enrollment — which includes part-time students — has increased 0.1 percent from last year, with 23,085 students compared to 23,064 students last year.
With the exception of the JHCOE, which saw an increase of 116 students, each of those colleges has seen a drop in enrollment.
The College of Nursing saw a 2.7 percent drop from last year's 513 full-time students, whereas the College of Business Administration saw a 2.4 percent drop from last year's 2,520 students.
Instead of attempting to increase the numbers for the "Fifteenth Day," UT has held back 300 students' admission into the university for a semester.
"We feel awful if students aren't ready," said Vice President for External Affairs Larry Burns.
Burns and others at UT are advocating for the 300 students given enrollment deferments until January to take a semester off and enroll in a community college to better prepare themselves for the rigor of a university curriculum.
With this program, Burns is confident UT's student body will not only improve, but also, when future Fifteenth Days come, UT will be more prepared.
"If we admit them now, we get their subsidy for a year," he said. "I'd rather have it for three or four years. Our most important student is the one that we have."
Burns, along with Associate Vice President for Enrollment Services Kevin Kucera, would like to see a transformation in the way students look at UT.
Burns said the university's long-term plan is to transform UT from a school that practices open enrollment, into what he called a "destination environment," which means students will start to list UT as their first choice.
Burns and Kucera said UT has already grown beyond being a regional school, and the two institutions UT dissuades incoming freshmen from attending are the Ohio State University and the University of Cincinnati.
"Every college that we have is showing a higher ACT composite," Kucera said. "It speaks volumes to our ability to draw a student with a greater chance of success."
In addition to raising their ACT composite score requirement from 18 to 19, the College of Nursing will also no longer offer an associate's degree program.
Aaron Collins, a fourth-semester College of Nursing student in the Associate of Science in Nursing program said while most hospitals are requiring a Bachelor of Science in Nursing, the training is the same and the standards for graduation are much higher in the ASN program.
"Most of the students that I've talked with agree that the university has been good to them in terms of finding jobs," he later added.
Director of Career Services Beth Nicholson said there is a good relationship between the university and the city, and that jobs for new graduates in the ASN program do exist.
"Health Care is still growing; ‘green' industries are up-and-coming," Nicholson said, "Students just need to be creative; regardless of their major, they need to articulate what they can offer an employer."
She also encouraged students to begin thinking about internships as early as sophomore year and honing resume-writing skills as early as their first year in college.
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