University College Dean Peter White said that UNM is already making large strides in retaining students - a statement backed up by the official 2002 enrollment report.
"A lot of students are under the impression that we have a very bad problem with retention rates and I don't think that's any longer true," White said. "I think we're on our way to making significant progress and people in our community are very hopeful about these preliminary results."
The report stated that overall enrollment is up from last fall by 3.5 percent and freshmen retention up to the third semester is up 75.8 percent.
White said that the high retention rate is due to multiple factors, including increased cooperation between Academic Affairs and various student affairs offices. He added that the interest groups in the freshman learning communities have also helped.
Freshman learning communities consist of groups of students who work, study and take classes together, which is meant to ease their acclimation to the University environment.
Also, White said, the role of faculty in those communities has been instrumental in helping students "learn the ways of success in the University."
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"Our faculty are teaching first-semester students how to think and write and analyze and calculate and how to do research," he said.
Because of that work, he said, during the past three years the average first-year student's GPA has risen from 2.57 to 2.84. That increase, White said, equates to a jump from 53 to 70 percent in the number of students who achieved the lottery success scholarship. That jump represents higher retention of freshmen students.
"When students achieve the lottery, they're much more likely to stay in school," White said.
The year's freshman class is the largest in history, with 2,821 students enrolling at UNM - a 17.3 percent increase. Despite the rise in the number of students making the transition from the first-year bridge scholarship to the lottery scholarship, White added, anxieties about retaining such a large class are still alive and well.
"I am concerned that with this large freshman class it'll be very difficult to keep those rates at the level they are now," White said.
White also responded to a Harvard University study released last month that focused on analyzing merit-based scholarships programs in George, Florida, New Mexico and Michigan - which brought the Bridge to Success and Lottery Success scholarships under scrutiny.
The report, with studies conducted by two UNM social sciences associate professors, Melissa Binder and Philip Ganderton, stated that the two scholarships do not boost college attendance among New Mexico's high school seniors and also widens the enrollment gap between whites and minorities.
White contends that the report was a preliminary study done with outdated figures from 1997 and 1998.
"We've done so many things in the University to try to retain our students that could not have been anticipated by our professors," he said.
He added that the UNM Office of Institutional Research is going to publish a response on the Harvard study using data to show the positive effect of the two scholarships on UNM students.
However, White agreed with Binder's assertion that more work should be done at the high school level - but the University is working on it.
White said that the Office of the Provost has put together a K-12 committee that includes several subcommittees that are addressing how the University can work best with local high schools.
Also, he added, last year University College started the UNM Summer Academy, a program that offers college credit to high school juniors and seniors.
"We hope to attract some of the best and brightest students in Albuquerque," White said.
He added that he thinks the University's work with freshman programs will continue to attract large freshmen classes and he hopes that UNM can continue to retain those students.
