The Price of Growth

The University of Alabama at Birmingham, the largest employer in the state, has made a huge cultural, economic and even physical impact on the city of Birmingham since the 1960s.

That impact shows no sign of lessening, given UAB’s continued, aggressive expansion.

UAB posted a record enrollment of 19,535 in fall 2016. School President Ray Watts has set a target of 20,000 students by 2018.

And enrollment could be well beyond that number within about five years, according to Bradley Barnes, UAB’s vice provost for enrollment management. This rapid growth is part of a long-term strategy, one driven in part by the university’s need for revenue, Barnes said.

While managing this growth is not easy, Barnes and other school officials believe they are planning for and handling it effectively.

This includes the task of providing adequate facilities for this larger student body, as well as retaining students — and helping them thrive academically — once they are enrolled.

Perhaps most importantly, the UAB students Iron City Ink contacted seem satisfied with the school — both socially and academically — though many of them also complained about such recurring headaches as parking, housing and transportation.

In this, the first in a series of stories about UAB’s growth and its impact on downtown Birmingham, we examine the reasons behind the school’s push for higher enrollment, the selling points that make the school attractive to students, the steps being taken to increase retention and graduation rates and the apparently fruitful relationship between the campus and the city.

In search of revenue

Enrollment on the Southside campus could possibly reach 24,000 within five years, according to Barnes.

“That’s a lofty goal, but in terms of campus infrastructure and the way we are growing and expanding, that would be a reasonable goal,” Barnes said.

One important reason to foster this rapid growth is simple, according to Barnes: the need for revenue.

Like other public universities in Alabama, UAB has suffered from declining state funding.

In fact, Alabama is one of nine states where per-student funding is down by more than 30 percent since the start of the Great Recession in 2008, according to The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

To make up the shortfall, UAB needs more money from tuition — especially that paid by international and out-of-state students. Non-residents pay higher fees than Alabama residents — sometimes twice as much, depending on their majors — Barnes said.

Academic factors also drive the quest for non-resident students, according to Barnes. ACT scores in Alabama are below the national average, and high school graduation rates in the state are “plateauing,” Barnes said.

“To increase enrollment with quality, high-paying students, more universities are looking to out-of-state markets,” he said.

But UAB remains committed to making a place for in-state students, according to Barnes.

“One reason we are going for out-of-state students is because in-state students are a priority to us,” he said. “Out-of-state students help subsidize some of the expenses for in-state students. If we did not have out-of-state students attending UAB, in-state tuition would be much higher.”

In addition, Barnes said, UAB is committed to making room for students from the city and Jefferson County, including those whose high-school academic performance was less than stellar. The university also brags on the racial and ethnic diversity of its university community, which includes staff, faculty and students from 110 countries, according to UAB Media Relations.

“UAB has one of the highest African-American populations of any university in the country, about double that of [The University of Alabama],” Barnes said

Leveling the playing field

Since starting his job in 2015, Barnes, who formerly worked at the University of Alabama, has taken a number of steps to boost recruitment and enrollment and to “level the playing field with the large schools in the state.” 

In addition to the focus on out-of-state markets, UAB conducted a realignment of scholarships, which Barnes said allows the university to compete more for students in Alabama and around the nation.

“We now award the value of tuition to students with a 30 ACT and a 3.5 GPA or higher. In the past for those scores, a student may have only received partial tuition. This allows us to target prospective students to a greater extent based on the quality of academic programs and less on the cost of tuition,” Barnes said.

UAB also upgraded its campus tours, adding an air-conditioned bus that allowed prospective students and their parents to see more of the campus without walking for blocks in the Alabama heat, according to Barnes. “This allows us to leverage the city of Birmingham and the medical district in ways we have never done before,” he said.

UAB also is attracting students by adding the amenities expected on a traditional residential campus, such as new dorms, a recreation center and a new student center. Non-traditional students, including part-time students and graduate students, are still “crucial to UAB’s success,” Barnes said.

“But we can create an environment more conducive to traditional students,” he said.

Marc Booker, executive director of housing and dining, grew up in Pell City and said UAB is now viewed differently than in the 1980s.

“It was a medical school, and if you weren’t in medicine, it was sort of like high school part two,” he said. “You could stay at home and commute to campus because it was in Birmingham.”

The new facilities on campus, including the Campus Green, have changed that perception and made UAB more competitive with other campuses in the South — be they traditional or urban — according to Booker.

“You’ve got something here in Birmingham that you can experience,” he said. “[UAB] is very affordable, and I think a lot of students are drawn to it more today because of the other things that they can do outside the classroom,” he said.

Students generally satisfied

Students seem to appreciate the new campus amenities.

“Hill Student Center is wonderful,” said Nadia Harden, a sophomore from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with a double major in theater and health care management. “I like to call it the living room of UAB.”

“When I give tours, I like to tell students that you can sit on the Campus Green and not realize that you’re in the biggest city in Alabama,” said Eli Ussery, a junior from Columbus, Georgia, majoring in industrial distribution.

“I love the new facilities,” added Adim Premani, a junior from Hoover majoring in information systems.

Premani chose UAB over the University of Alabama and Auburn University, in part because he grew up visiting the campus while his sisters went to school there.

He said he likes “the direction UAB is moving in,” adding that the school is becoming “another state school — like Alabama or Auburn — but it’s still inner-city, and it still has that diversity.”

“The culture that UAB has is very different than the other state schools,” he said.

Premani is not the only student drawn to UAB at least in part because it is located in Birmingham — a city that is becoming a popular destination for food, music and other amenities and also provides students with a large selection of jobs, internships and volunteer opportunities.

Andrew Whitfield, a senior majoring in mechanical engineering, is from Tuscaloosa, where most of his friends attended Alabama. “The city has everything,” Whitfield said, noting the diversity of Birmingham’s population and the variety of different neighborhoods. 

A sophomore pre-med student from Hoover majoring in public health, Hassan Sadruddin enrolled at UAB because of its good reputation as medical school.

However, he admits he was not excited at first about attending UAB. “I didn’t think I would get the college experience I wanted, but when I got to campus and was in Birmingham on a daily basis, I realized that it was very underrated,” Sadruddin said. “I really fell in love with it — not just UAB but the city of Birmingham itself.”

Joanne Jacobs, a junior biology major from Flowery Branch, Georgia, approves of the attempt to make UAB a more traditional campus. “I think it is a good move for the university, considering how much our school is expanding,” Jacobs said. 

But she acknowledges there are some limitations.

“It is still a very young university, so it’s in that normal, awkward phase of transitioning from a commuter campus to a more residential campus,” she said.

And it isn’t fair to compare UAB to the other large, long-established schools in the state in terms of campus life on weekends or the number of on-campus residents, according to Jacobs.

“It’s exciting that it is becoming a more traditional campus, but you can’t compare it to the other campuses as of yet,” she said.

However, Jacobs noted that, beyond the campus itself, the city of Birmingham offers students plenty of weekend diversions. “The university is as much a part of the city as the city is part of UAB,” she said.

This is not to say that the students had no complaints about UAB. Like many other students, Premani, Sadruddin, Harden and Whitfield expressed complaints about on-campus parking. Sadruddin and Harden also had concerns about housing, including the difficulties students can face when searching for adequate lodging off-campus.

Is it affordable?

The students said they have found UAB to be a pretty good bargain overall.

“With all the amenities, I think it’s very affordable,” said Ussery, who added UAB boasts “some of the top professors” and that a degree from the school “has a lot of value.”

“I would say it’s way more affordable than [the University of] Alabama,” Whitfield said.

For the two semesters of the 2016-17 school year, UAB tuition for an in-state, first-year freshman taking 12 credit hours per semester ranges from $15,840 to $19,340, which includes fees, books and supplies, a meal plan, housing and parking estimates.

An out-of-state, first year freshman can expect tuition costs to be about $29,668 for 12 credit hours (again, including fees, books and supplies, a meal plan, housing and parking estimates).

Tuition costs at UAB also depend on the student’s major and course selection — for example, the schools of  health professions, public health and nursing cost slightly more.

In comparison, an in-state, full-time undergraduate attending the University of Alabama will pay an estimated $29,636 (including fees, room/board, books and supplies, transportation and miscellaneous costs). An out-of-state, full-time undergraduate could see their bill for the same items reach $47,256.

At Auburn University, an in-state, full-time undergraduate is expected to pay about $15,229 (including tuition, fees, room/board, books and supplies, transportation and personal expenses). An out-of-state, full-time undergraduate will pay around $24,301 for the same items.

Ussery, Premani, Harden and Whitfield all said UAB has, in Whitfield’s words, “a ton of scholarships” available, with many students putting together a web of smaller scholarships from different sources, including alumni and various academic departments.

Harden, who applied for dozens of scholarships her senior year in high school, said UAB is reasonably priced compared to many other schools. However, she said she believes scholarships make it more feasible to attend.

There are also many students taking out federal student loans and a significant number working part- or full-time jobs or work study programs to pay for school, according to Premani, who has federal loans and also works 25 hours a week in the information technology department at the Division of Preventive Medicine.

Ussery said there are “hundreds of different ways” for students to find or earn money, but they must be proactive in their search. “Students have to be their own advocates,” he said. “You have to sell yourself. No one will just hand you money.”

Boosting retention, graduation

Once students come to UAB, the university does everything it can to keep them there, despite the cost of retention programs, according to Barnes.

“Retention is such a critical part of this growth strategy, not just enrollment,” Barnes said.

Retention overall increased by a rate of 3.1 percent from 2015-16, according to a UAB news release.

The freshman residency program, which began last fall, allows the university to “consistently target [students] throughout their first year” and help them get the resources they need to succeed academically, Barnes said. There is also the Blazing Start retention program for first-year students at the Vulcan Materials Academic Success Center.

UAB will also seek to boost graduation rates through a new program called “Finish in Four.” 

“If they agree to finish in four years, the school will guarantee they can get the classes to do that,” Barnes said.

The university also plans to revamp its tuition structure, which was designed for non-traditional students and considered 12 hours of coursework a full-time load, even though students must take at least 15 hours per semester to graduate in four years.

“On average, our students take about 12.3, so it’s not hard to see why our graduation rates are low and why so many students leave,” Barnes said. “We are looking at our tuition structure to incentivize them to take closer to 15 hours per semester.”

Demands of Transformation

The university certainly faces some challenges in managing enrollment growth, successfully reshaping its physical footprint, changing its long-established identity as a commuter school and creating a campus that can accommodate more than 20,000 students.

Barnes said the concerns include parking and transportation, sources of many student complaints.

The university must also provide enough dining facilities and residence halls. “We can’t ask 2,200 freshmen to live on campus if we don’t have adequate housing,” Barnes said.

UAB must maintain proper faculty-student ratios and provide enough classrooms, too. The latter concern should be adequately addressed by new or expanded facilities for the College of Arts & Sciences, the Collat School of Business and the School of Nursing, according to Barnes.

“And that goes back to planned growth,” he said, citing an updated master plan for campus development adopted by the UA System Board of Trustees in February 2016.

It also involves extensive collaboration and advanced planning by UAB staff and faculty in a wide variety of departments, according to Barnes.

“We’re always meeting and talking, and if we didn’t have that level of communication, this would be a big, dysfunctional family, and students would suffer,” he said.