Ad Hoc Committee reports IU Bloomington campus at capacity for undergraduate enrollment

Aug. 15, 2001

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Indiana University's Bloomington campus has essentially reached capacity in terms of undergraduate enrollment, according to a report from a task force created to study this issue.

The Ad Hoc Task Force on Capacity of the IUB Campus recently submitted its findings to IU President Myles Brand.

The task force noted that undergraduate enrollment is the critical issue because there has been little variation in professional enrollments over the last 20 years. "At the lower level of the undergraduate curriculum, we are at capacity in terms of our ability to provide quality instruction. At the upper level we are near or at capacity," stated the report.

David Zaret, executive associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, chaired the 13-member committee that compiled the report.

In receiving the 38-page report, Brand said, "I greatly appreciate the work of the task force chaired by David Zaret in compiling a thorough, thoughtful and data-driven report. I fully accept the task force's conclusion that our undergraduate enrollment at the Bloomington campus is at capacity. Having reached this level of enrollment, we can now focus even more directly on raising the quality of our entering classes."

Among the findings in the report are:

• IUB has made efficient use of physical facilities and instructional staff to meet the demand from more students in recent years.
• More intensive use of physical facilities and instructional staff to teach more undergraduates has not negatively affected some indicators of the quality of instruction.
• Most of the recent increase in the IUB undergraduate population occurred since 1997-98.
• The composition of the IUB faculty has undergone mild changes over the last 10 years.
• The IUB campus may be nearing its fiscal and competitive capacity to recruit more undergraduates with qualifications at least equal to those of current students.
• Resources for academic and residential support do not pose critical bottlenecks on IUB's capacity.

The ad hoc committee was formed by Brand last fall to examine all aspects of the IUB capacity issue, not attempting to specify a precise number but "to specify the relevant indicators that supply objective data on capacity and to provide an assessment of whether we are facing the limits of enrollment growth, have grown too large, or perhaps are not large enough."

Four key assumptions that guided the committee were: (1) the concept of capacity with predictions for the near future of five to 10 years, (2) the teaching mission of IUB that requires a balance between access and excellence with economic means not being a barrier to qualified students, (3) the character and culture of the campus, and (4) the need for indicators to accurately determine the variables that determine capacity.

(Richard Doty, 812-855-0084, rgdoty@indiana.edu)

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