Memorandum of Understanding

Established in 1844 and located in the State capital, the University at Albany is nationally recognized as a rising research and graduate education center, an institution that is on a trajectory to becoming one of the nation’s leading universities. While Albany’s historical roots are in the liberal arts and professional teacher education, the University’s research and graduate education portfolio has transformed the institution over the past three decades. Over much of that time, a major strength of the University has been in the social and behavioral sciences, in atmospheric and environmentally related sciences, in public policy, particularly in relation to research and service needs at the state and local levels of government and in management and administration, literacy, and information science and technologies. More recently, Albany has become nationally recognized as a center for research and education related to materials science, life sciences, and in public health.

The University’s special and unique character is grounded in the quality of its highly regarded faculty and nationally recognized programs across the arts and sciences and in the professions (business, education, criminal justice, information science, public administration, public health, and social welfare); in the interdisciplinary and international character of much of the institution’s research and curricula; and in Albany’s commitment to be proactive in relating the basic and applied research conducted by faculty and students to its various communities—local, regional, national, and global. Many of the University’s initiatives and programs are supported through strategic partnerships with government, industry, business, and other private sector entities.

In this dynamic environment, Albany has emerged as a Carnegie Doctoral/Research Extensive university that emphasizes the integration of teaching, scholarship, creative expression, and outreach to its communities in all of its undergraduate, graduate, and professional programs. Within the State University, Albany’s role as one of the four university centers is defined by the blending of a research and graduate education mission with a particularly strong undergraduate program that provides important opportunities for students to engage in research and internships in public, private, and not-for-profit agencies, which its location in a large government center and an urban setting facilitates.

The University is united in its commitment and determination to raise the quality and impact of its programs still further and, over the next decade, to increase its standing among the nation’s mid-sized tier-one research universities.

Projected Institutional Position and Benchmarks of Success

The University at Albany aspires to continue to increase its ranking among the nation’s most prestigious research universities and to qualify for election to the American Association of Universities. In order to realize the goals the University has set for itself, Albany will need to continue to address several important issues, including the following: (1) continue to raise its admission standards to a level that would place it among the most selective in the country; (2) reaffirm and continue to invest in undergraduate education, including the University’s strong commitment to General Education, to international education, and to providing access to undergraduate research and internship experiences; (3) review all its programs, departments and institutes on a regular, cyclical basis; (4) assure that the institution’s budgeting process and reporting system provides the necessary management tools; and (5) complete plans for, and implement, a major capital campaign to seek levels of external support appropriate to its institutional goals.

Albany’s ambitious goals to strengthen its position in the forefront of American public higher education will require a steadfast and focused commitment of energies and resources on the part of the campus as well as substantial support on the part of System Administration. Obviously, financial realities and pressures present challenges for both Albany and System Administration in their shared commitment to seeing Albany reach its aspirations. Additional resources must be found to raise faculty salaries, improve graduate student stipends to competitive levels, support expanded recruitment initiatives, enhance the undergraduate experience, and support research—including Albany’s commitment to continue to increase its external funding. Accordingly, beyond seeking additional support from the legislature whenever possible, Albany looks to System Administration to:

· Continue to adhere to and support a regular budget process so that the campus can plan rationally and rely upon predictable outcomes for meeting enrollment, selectivity, and sponsored research goals.

1.0 Enrollment/Admission Selectivity

1.1 Enrollment growth

Over time, Albany seeks to move total campus enrollment to 20,000 students. The University’s detailed enrollment projection is as follows:

Note: Enrollment goals may be affected by external factors such as changing economic conditions, tuition increases, and fiscal constraints. Official enrollment targets that are the basis for the University’s budget model are set annually through dialogue between campuses and System Administration.

Over time, Albany plans to achieve its enrollment goals in a number of ways. Freshman classes will be increased to 2,400 (assuming selectivity goals can be achieved). Part-time (and possibly full-time) graduate enrollments in professional master’s degree programs will rise as new modes of delivery are developed to appeal to new groups of students. Albany will also increase undergraduate transfer students if the quality exists in the applicant pool. These plans will be reflected in subsequent five-year plans.

Currently, Albany plans some enrollment growth at both the undergraduate and the graduate level. As a research and graduate institution, Albany will continue to monitor closely the appropriate mix of undergraduate to graduate students in both headcount and FTE terms. While the current split of approximately 70:30 seems appropriate, success in increasing part-time graduate enrollment could alter this slightly.

Importantly, Albany seeks to be a campus of choice for high-achieving, full-time, residential students. Its highly successful Presidential Scholars and Project Renaissance initiatives are examples of strategies for pursuing this objective.

1.2 Student mix

Within Albany’s overall Enrollment Plan, there will be modest but important shifts in the composition of the student population.

Broader Geographic Base: The University plans to enrich the educational experience for all students by attracting a student population that is more geographically diverse. Albany has begun a planned increase in the recruitment of undergraduate students from selected states outside of New York. In doing so, the University expects to compete directly for out-of-state students with public and private universities in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Florida, and to a lesser extent, public institutions in Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and Ohio.

Additionally, in support of its overall focus on a more international campus, the University has begun selected recruitment initiatives aimed at enrolling a larger number of international students as freshmen and transfers, and in selected disciplines at the graduate level. The number of international students enrolled at Albany is at an all-time high of 889, representing 85 countries. Of the total, 70% were graduate students. Further increases will be achieved by recruitment at both the freshman and transfer levels. Albany’s goal is to double the number of international freshmen and transfers entering the University from 53 in fall 1999 to 106 in fall 2004.

Albany is also in the process of making needed adjustments to the geographic mix of its in-state student population, slightly reducing the proportion of “downstate” freshmen over the next few years.

Overall, five-year goals for geographic mix of the freshman class (first-time, fulltime) are:

· Ratio of master’s to doctoral-level students slightly over time. In fall 1999, this ratio was 1.47. By fall 2004, following increases in professional master’s programs and little if any planned increases in doctoral enrollments, this ratio is expected to exceed 1.70.

· Out-of-state U.S. citizen student enrollment in its graduate programs. With competitive graduate stipend schedules and tuition assistance in hand, Albany will strive to create a campus-wide incoming profile at the doctoral level composed of 50% from New York State, 25% from out-of-state U.S., and 25% international. At the master’s and non-degree graduate levels, Albany expects little change because most of these students are self-supported.

Racial/Ethnic Composition: The University plans to continue and refine as necessary its successful initiatives that have resulted in an undergraduate student body that closely matches the racial and ethnic composition of the State of New York. In each of the past ten years, at least 25 percent of the entering freshman class at Albany have been students of color – i.e., African-American, Hispanic-American, Asian-American, and Native-American. Even as Albany moves to becoming “most selective,” it will continue to address its responsibility as a public institution to promote access to a quality educational opportunity for all the citizens of New York.

1.3 Recruitment

In 1996 the University launched an effort to shape and coordinate its admissions initiatives across campus units through a newly created Office of Enrollment Management. Working first with a national enrollment management consultant, the University began a process of substantially re-engineering its admissions operations, by increasing the size of its staff and expanding its resource base. Substantial efforts have focused on increasing the prospect pool, especially with high-achieving students, and on improving the conversion of those students to applicants and enrollees. Publications have been revised, multimedia and web applications developed, and the campus visit program has been substantially upgraded, and special programs and other opportunities to visit have been increased. The geographic recruitment base has also been expanded to include New England and several mid Atlantic states. Further, a broad range of campus constituencies—including faculty, students and alumni—has been integrated into the recruitment process. The success of these efforts thus far is measurable on a number of fronts, including: the size and academic profile of subsequent classes; improved admit and yield rates; and the fact that in 1999 and 2000 Albany led all SUNY campuses in number of applications processed by the Application Processing Center (APC) and total freshman applications.

Albany needs to be able to act quickly and effectively in managing its applicant pool and requires additional flexibility and faster response time from the APC. System will work with Albany to effect such improvements, and look for ways to improve the handling of student application data.

· to improve the overall yield rate from the current 25% to approximately 30%; and

· to improve the yield rate of students accepted by Albany who are also admitted at the other University Centers and, where yield rates can be cost-effectively determined, Albany’s current and aspirational peers.

To achieve its established freshman enrollment goals for the next five years, Albany has set a number of benchmarks and developed a wide range of strategies. The University will strive to:

· Increase the number of inquiries from the highest achieving students from an estimated 2,100 to 5,000 and to increase the number of fall inquiries from the next tier from an estimated 5,000 to 10,000.

· Improve the yield rate of the Group 1 students—both Presidential Scholars and other Group 1 and high Group 2 students—by 4% over for the next eight years.

1.4 Level on selectivity matrix

One of Albany’s strategic goals is to have a student body with an academic profile comparable to the most selective of this nation’s public research universities. To accomplish this goal, the University has articulated the following strategic initiatives for the next eight years:

· Raise its admission standards and move to Group 1—Most Selective—on the Selectivity Matrix;

· Maintain the percentage of Presidential Scholars (currently students with high school grades of at least 91% and average SATs of 1330 ) to approximately 10% of the incoming freshman class (Albany intends, in short, gradually to raise the standards for admission as a Presidential Scholar); and

· Reduce the percentage of “Special Admits” to its freshman class from its current level of 18.3% to a level of 10%.

1.5 Comparisons with selected benchmark institutions

	University at Albany	UCalif-Santa Barbara	UMASS-Amherst	University at Buffalo	University at Stony Brook	UNC-Chapel Hill
FT Undergraduate Enrollment	9,976	16,391	16,960	13,256	10,917	14,394
Acceptance Rate	63%	61%	74%	71%	54%²	35%
SAT (25/75 Percentile)	1030-1220	1060-1270	1010-1230	1010-1230	1000-1220	1130-1340
High School GPA % > 3.0	-	99%	64%	48%	85%	97%
Top 10% of HS Class1	14%	95%	17%	21%	24%	N/A
% Full-time Faculty	67%	82%	90%	73%	73%	91%
Freshman Retention	85%³	-	79%	82%	83%³	95%
Graduation Rate (6-year)	66%³	70%	57%	60%	54%³	82%

² SUNY IR Application, Acceptance, and Enrollment Profile, Freshman Applicants, Fall 1998 (Report 22-99).

Relative to its current and aspirational peers, the University at Albany currently shows a number of strengths, particularly its acceptance and “average graduation” rates. Its relative weaknesses are related at present to its ability to attract higher percentages of top students. As Albany moves to meet these goals, it will look to System Administration to:

· Continue to look for ways (as, for example, through the recent grant of Mission Review funds) to allocate strategically vital resources for accelerating Albany’s progress; and

· Join the University in advocating for State funds to match private funds to create merit scholarships for high-achieving undergraduate students—e.g., Governor’s Scholars.

	Fall 1999 (actual)	Fall 2000[1] (approved)	Fall 2001 (planned)	Fall 2002 (planned)	Fall 2003 (planned)	Fall 2004 (planned)
Undergraduate
FT first-time	2,282	2,290	2,290	2,290	2,290	2,380
FT transfer	1,143	1,095	1,095	1,095	1,095	1,095
FT Cont/Ret	7,160	7,489	7,742	7,776	7,798	7,787
Total FT	10,585	10,874	11,127	11,161	11,183	11,262
Total PT	1,152	1,004	1,018	1,025	1,041	1,041
Total Undergraduate	11,737	11,878	12,145	12,186	12,224	12,303
Graduate
FT	2,178	2,151	2,155	2,155	2,155	2,169
PT	2,986	3,025	3,122	3,670	3,849	3,929
Total Graduate	5,164	5,176	5,277	5,825	6,004	6,098
Total Headcount	16,901	17,054	17,422	18,011	18,228	18,401
Total AAFTE	14,059	14,277	14,572	14,861	14,970	15,097

	Selectivity	Fall	Fall	Fall	Fall
	Group	1999 (actual)	2000 (planned)	2001 (planned)	2002 (planned)
Regular Admits who have an SAT	Total	100.0%	100.0%	100%	100%
Score and a High School Average	In Group 1	20.9%	23.9%	28.0%	32.0%
	In Group 2	48.9%	50.8%	52.0%	52.0%
	In Group 3	29.9%	25.3%	20.0%	16.0%
	In Group 4	0.3%	0.0%	0%	0%
	In Group 5	0.0%	0.0%	0%	0%

Special Admits (EOP or Other Risk) as a Percent of Total First-Time Full-Time		18.3%	15.7%	14.7%	14.0%

Market Niche/Distinctiveness

Projected Institutional Position and Benchmarks of Success

1.0 Enrollment/Admission Selectivity

1.1 Enrollment growth

Over time, Albany seeks to move total campus enrollment to 20,000 students. The University’s detailed enrollment projection is as follows:

Importantly, Albany seeks to be a campus of choice for high-achieving, full-time, residential students. Its highly successful Presidential Scholars and Project Renaissance initiatives are examples of strategies for pursuing this objective.

1.2 Student mix

1.3 Recruitment

1.4 Level on selectivity matrix

1.5 Comparisons with selected benchmark institutions