Competition fierce for students, Zukoski tells PSS

Earlier this academic year, President Satish K. Tripathi announced the university’s plans to grow enrollment by 2,000 students over a period of five years.

While stories abound about the shrinking pool of prospective college students in many states, there remains plenty of opportunity to attract students to UB, Provost Charles Zukoski said when questioned about the growth plan during Thursday’s Professional Staff Senate meeting.

“At the undergraduate level, less than 50 percent of the degrees awarded in New York State are delivered by public universities (including both SUNY and CUNY). There’s an enormous pool of students out there who don’t see the value of UB so they’re going elsewhere. There’s no shortage of students out there. We just have to compete for them,” Zukoski said.

“Less than 20 percent of the graduate and professional degrees are delivered by publics (SUNY only),” he added. “There’s plenty of demand, plenty of students out there. How do we compete? That’s the challenge.”

Zukoski noted the branding initiative the university is currently in the midst of will help tell UB’s story to a larger pool of prospective students across New York and the nation. Several new academic initiatives — including the Communities of Excellence and the UB Curriculum, which replaces the former gen ed program — will also go a long way toward attracting more students.

The pool of potential college students appears to be stronger in the Northeast than other parts of the country, according to Zukoski.

“What I’ve seen for the Northeast suggests that we’re flat to slightly negative in the demographic that we’re targeting,” he said. “I’m not saying that it isn’t a brutal competition. I’m simply saying that it’s a competition and that there are a lot of students out there. We deliver an extraordinary product. The question to me is, why aren’t we flooded with students?”

Zukoski also updated the PSS about several other projects and initiatives:

• The new Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences building in downtown Buffalo is progressing nicely, with a topping-off ceremony scheduled to happen within the next month or so. “It is moving forward remarkably on time and on schedule, and we should be proud of that,” he said. “It is changing the landscape of downtown Buffalo, and it is one of the key features where we are leading the renaissance of Buffalo.”
• The brand strategy will be unveiled in the spring. “Many features have gone into it to talk about who we are, what we are and where we’re going. Stay tuned. Good things are going to come out of it,” he said.
• Dean searches are underway for the College of Arts and Sciences and the schools of Management and Dental Medicine.
• The UB Curriculum begins this fall and features approximately 1,000 new and revised courses — including 140 small group seminars for new freshmen — accounting for one-third of the undergraduate catalog. “There is a tremendous amount of creativity, range and depth to the courses and it is really changing the entire undergraduate curriculum here at UB,” he said.
• As part of the system-wide performance program known as SUNY Excels, UB’s Performance Improvement Plan calls for the university to raise its first-year retention rate to 91 percent, four-year graduation rate to 60 percent and six-year graduation rate to 75 percent — all by the 2020-21 academic year.