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University
College enrollment spikes
Tuition remission benefit sparks sharp increase By Andy Clendennen You can never have too much education.
When a 100 percent tuition remission plan for full-time University employees taking undergraduate courses and programs went into effect this summer, most people thought the reaction would be positive. But no one expected what has occurred: University College enrollment has jumped from about 90 undergraduate students to more than 650 in the span of one semester -- an increase of more than sevenfold.
"We are very pleased with the initial level of interest." And so are the folks at University College. Because of the relatively small class sizes prior to the new benefits plan, the college was able to absorb most of the increased enrollment with little hassle. In fact, only two or three areas of study needed to be substantially added to in order to accommodate all of the students. "The only area in which we had to really increase was English composition," said Robert E. Wiltenburg, Ph.D., dean of University College. "We are now running five sections of English composition for the first time in anybody's memory. Typically, we'd fill one-and-a-half sections, maybe. "There were some dance course enrollments that went up, too. But there have been interesting increases in many different subjects. After English composition, math and anthropology were the two that gained the most, so really people have had interests across the board." But while class size wasn't much of a problem, Wiltenburg said the entire University College staff encountered a hurdle to enrolling that many students. Advising. "The main strain on us has not been in the courses we're teaching; it's been in the advising," Wiltenburg said. "We scheduled six informational meetings for mid-July and mid-August, and I think we saw about 450 people in those information sessions. That's when we began to get a sense of the magnitude. "Then, almost all of the people wanted to have individual advising sessions, so everybody was helping out. It would get to be 5 o'clock in the afternoon and somebody would pop their head in my door and say, 'We have a student, can you advise them?' So everybody from the dean on down was doing advising as needed."
But a good many are first-time students, at least in the University College sense. "I have been thinking about taking classes for some time," said Cynthia Bowdry, an administrative assistant in the Office of Public Affairs who was once an education major, but is now planning to transfer her hours and pursue a bachelor's degree in some aspect of business. "However, cost has always been a factor. Now, I decided to take advantage of pursuing my degree for personal satisfaction, and the cost was right.
Everyone will be watching the numbers over the next couple of semesters to see if this huge increase is an anomaly, or if it's a sign of things to come. After all, according to Wiltenburg, there are thousands of employees who could greatly benefit from this new program. "One of the things we're going to be watching closely is how the pattern develops," he said. "We don't know, for example, if the 500 we saw was an enormous surge that will never be repeated as people try out this new benefit, or is it just the beginning of an even larger group. "One of the things that came to light was how many Washington University employees could potentially benefit from this. We have, as I understand it, about 10,000 employees, and 3,300 of those do not have a bachelor's degree. Two thousand of them have some college but no bachelor's, and what that says to me is potentially there is a large number of people that could benefit from this." And another benefit might be on the way soon for those wishing to take some classes with a more short-term goal in mind. University College is trying to hammer out plans to incorporate an associate's degree into its curriculum, hopefully by next fall, according to Wiltenburg. "Harvard and Penn do it, largely as an accommodation for employees," Wiltenburg said. "We wouldn't be recruiting people for associate's degrees, but for people who are working with us, it would give a milestone to work toward as they work on their longer program." For now, though, both University College and human resources are trying to recover from the swell of interest in the tuition remission policy. "You don't know if this is just an initial reaction to a new benefit change and whether it will decrease and level off," Lauman said. "But at the same time, we expect to see a number of new employees who will take advantage of this opportunity for continuing education. "All signs indicate that our employee-tuition enrollments are definitely heading upward. Isn't this a great benefit for the employees and for the University?" |
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