TIME FOR UCF TO CHANGE ENROLLMENT GROWTH MINDSET

Since his arrival to UCF in 1992 until his departure in 2018, former UCF president John Hitt constantly drove towards higher student enrollment and campus expansion. In the process, for over 25 years, UCF has been shown tremendous growth, unprecedented infrastructural expansion and student enrollment, to where it is now the nation’s second largest university. But the growth mindset continues with the premise that success is measured by UCF’s size and that the growth in the number of programs, graduates, and campuses is seen as a principal measure of success. 

I believe, it is time to re-examine UCF’s drive for enrollment growth and ask ourselves where should the university go and charts its next twenty five years? Pursuing excellence while simultaneously maintaining growth mindset are hard, if impossible to achieve.

Whether we like to admit it or not, the hard fact is that university student growth and expansion comes at expense! There is no magical formula for raising standards while lowering costs for infinite period of time. There will never be one.  I believe the time seems right for a new and strategic enrollment and growth direction. 

In an era when scientific and technological advances are transforming the world, which is almost unrecognizable from what it was three or four decades ago, we must ask ourselves whether simply increasing enrollment numbers or degrees is enough to develop, or even sustain, the reputation and eminence of a university. Can a longer list of programs, staff, students, or buildings be sufficient to consider a university ‘world class?’ Can size alone be deemed a standard, or enabling factor for excellence? When benchmarks currently established to nationally rank universities place heavy emphasis on the qualityand impactof education and scholarly research and have no benchmarks for size. 

Believing that we can be excellent and a ‘model institution’ despite our growing size is a mistake. The true test of excellence is to be ranked in the top 25% by current national or international ranking criteria and being recognized as a ‘top’ university by an outside sources. Self-praise has no place in national ranking.Competition is becoming tougher each yearand without national and international recognition, UCF cannot hope to compete in attracting the best students, faculty members and researchers. 

The new direction need to align vision and resources towards new initiatives that drive the university’s development through the prism of entrepreneurship, creativity, quality, prominence and reputation, equipping the smartest students and most prestigious faculty for success. We need a revised vision that recognizes the unprecedented advances in science, technology, medicine and education that have shaken our civilization to the very core in recent years.  As we have done successfully in recent university initiatives to focus aggressively on recruiting large number of National Merit Scholars and recruit top excellent faculty members through the Cluster Program, next we should place all our energies and resources on scholarship excellence and quality. It may be time to return to the original goal of reaching for the stars. Excellence has to be UCF’s one and only goal of the future, end the number-driven mindset, and replace it with an innovative and quality-driven one.