by Caleb Fort
Daily Lobo
UNM lost about $672,000 because of a tuition discount meant to boost summer enrollment, said Curtis Porter, associate vice president of budget, planning and analysis.
The discount, introduced last summer, made summer tuition 15 percent cheaper than normal tuition.
Enrollment went down about 5 percent from summer of 2005, according to the UNM Web site.
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Wynn Goering, associate provost, said the drop came as a surprise.
"We had hopes that summer enrollment would go up if we dropped tuition," he said. "In fact, it went down, which we didn't see coming."
Provost Reed Dasenbrock spoke to the regents about the loss at their meeting Tuesday.
"We thought price discounting would make a difference, but it didn't," he said. "Not all experiments work."
Nobody's sure why enrollment dropped, Goering said.
"Without a control group like you'd have in social experiment, it's really impossible to say," he said.
Dasenbrock said the drop might have been caused by students' problems paying for school.
"Increasing numbers of students are just running out of financial aid, and that could have something to do with it," he said. "It's a systemic problem that's hard for us to get at."
The program was a good effort, and it's important to keep trying to increase summer enrollment, Goering said.
"More students go to summer school, complete degrees and complete them faster than those who don't," he said. "Of course, the financial side is one side of the picture that we need to keep paying attention to."
About 8,000 students were enrolled in the last summer session.
Part of the effort to increase summer enrollment was a program for students who were on the verge of losing the
Lottery Scholarship.
Students who could keep the scholarship by getting a good grade in one class could enroll during the summer for free.
About 100 students retained the scholarship because of the program.
Regent Don Chalmers said that program offsets the financial loss.
"What would be worse is if instead of sitting here saying we lost $1 million, we lost 100 students," he said. "If we saved 100 students, that's something we have to take into consideration."
Full-time students bring about $8,000 per semester to the University in tuition and state funding, Dasenbrock said.
The situation might have been worse if UNM hadn't offered the discount, Goering said.
"Common sense would tell you that had we not done this, enrollment would have gone down more," he said. "You have to do your best to offer students classes that they actually want and need."
