Entering the midway point of my soon to be four years at Franklin Pierce, I am excited and eager to see what my following years have to entail, but I’m also left to ponder many of the activities, events, and situations that have occurred in my past two years here.
To put it bluntly, the problems of the university need to be addressed now, before it’s too late for the assurance of a better quality of life and education. This can be addressed in three key areas: students, staff and faculty, and the “powers that be.”
First off, students – Too often I hear students say that there is “nothing to do,” that this school has “nothing to offer,” and that they “can’t wait to transfer.” All I have to say to that is this: get involved. Get out of your dorm rooms and experience everything this university has to provide. By doing so you will greatly improve the overall quality of life within the university. Be part of a club, join a team, study abroad, meet new people and expand your horizons.
Second off, Professors, faculty, and staff, this is a call to you -. Yes, as I said, there are numerous ways in which students can get involved. But your job does not end at the classroom door. You too are part of the campus community, and you need to make a better effort to engage students. There are plenty of things professors do within their departments, but I'm saying get outside of your department or area of work and be mentors and advisors in clubs and organizations, coach teams, start fundraisers, and reach out to students to get them involved as much as possible. Even more so, support other clubs, teams, and charitable efforts by attending their events.
Areas on campus that have high retention rates are the Athletics Department and the Pierce Media Group. These areas have high retention rates because they make large efforts to involve, engage, and incorporate their students within the overall Franklin Pierce community.
Lastly, this goes out to the “powers that be,” the people who have real control - Let’s get our problems out in the open. To me that is the biggest problem of this university. Let’s stop hiding the bad.
According to President Birge in the December 10, 2009 issue of the Pierce Arrow, the article entitled “Pierce addresses low retention rate,” Franklin Pierce has a 59 percent retention rate for the 2008-2009 academic year. This is not ideal for any university; in fact it’s a pretty embarrassing number. According to that article, the university was supposed to review and discuss long and short-term goals which could be implemented for the spring 2010 semester in an effort to help reach students immediately. So far, at least visibly, no changes – big or small– have been made within the campus as we near the end of the spring 2010 semester. When relating to other schools within our price range, size, and location, and overall demographics we have the lowest retention rate and continuously low enrollment rate, according to issue 96 of The Exchange.
It’s evident that overall enrollment and retention is low at the College at Rindge, and will continue to be, by the actions that are being implemented throughout the university’s living areas. Last year there was the removal of the trailers and the addition of Granite Suites, which eliminated 109 beds (combined) for students. This year the university has announced that it will change Monadnock Hall from double to single rooms, which will eliminate 42 additional beds. These changes along with other renovations, such as common living space, the non-student housing of the A Frame, and closing down certain hallways in New Hampshire Hall, means that the university has reduced its living areas by 222 beds over the past two years. When put into perspective this is a 14 percent potential student decrease when considering potential students as “beds.” The elimination of beds shows me that the university does not expect student enrollment to grow, but in fact just the opposite. This is a very scary thought considering the university has barely over 1,400 enrolled in the undergraduate program at Rindge.
If you read any of our campus newspapers, either the Pierce Arrow or The Exchange, you can easily see through the immense amount of reporting that there are serious problems with retention, enrollment, tuition, budget, and overall student satisfaction. Due to this coverage, the Pierce Arrow is rarely allowed to be displayed within the admissions office, and is often screened and pre-read before it is put out for prospective students to see as it may put a bad light on the school. This is a huge problem. Students coming here need to know what this school has to offer, the good and the bad.
In our last open house for prospective students, it was frowned upon that the Pierce Arrow was passing out issues which had hard news stories on the university’s low retention rate and budget problems; we were not allowed to pass out that paper midway through the open house as we were told to get a news issue. Did you ever think that sheltering prospective students is part of the reason we have such a low retention rate?
In the September 20, 2006 issue of the Pierce Arrow, former Editor-in-Chief Trent Spiner interviewed then Provost Michael Bell as he talked about the increasing student enrollment on campus as it rose to 1,721. Bell said, “We thought we had a couple more years before we would see this many students, but I think that we have always known that the number of students that we wanted to have was around 1,710.” Just two years later in issue 94 of The Exchange, Carole Monroe, vice president for enrollment services, said that the university’s ideal enrollment is at 1,600-1,650. Today, President James Birge said that the school’s ideal enrollment would be at 1,500.
These inconsistencies over such a short span of time are reflective of the university’s turmoil. Let's get on the same page. The school needs to set an ideal rate in which they wish to have students enrolled and retained and not just fluctuate their numbers as the university’s statistics decline as a way to hide from embarrassment. How could the school say in 2006 that it expects to be at 1,700 students in “a couple more years” and yet we’re ahead in those years and the university is backtracking saying it expects around 1,500?
President Birge has made large efforts within his first year to make himself available to students; whether he is at a sporting event, attending a speaker, or even just eating with students in the dining hall. His efforts should be greatly commended, appreciated, and he should know his involvement within the Franklin Pierce commmunity does not go unnoticed. But he is one person and it will take the whole university to rebuild this campus.
Prospective and current students, family members, faculty and staff, this is not meant to scare you away from the College at Rindge; there are so many opportunities for one to embrace here. But ultimately, this should generate more public discourse about the problems at hand. We all need to come together as a campus community in order to achieve a positive future at Franklin Pierce. Embrace what we have and converse within our community on ways to instill a better Franklin Pierce education. If these issues are not addressed now, then it can be said that the vision of the university does not reach far into the future and a Franklin Pierce University degree will be just a thing of the past.
Nicholas Vitukevich is Assistant Editor-in-Chief of the Pierce Arrow and can be reached at arrowpublisher@gmail.com. The Pierce Arrow accepts and publishes letters to the editor.
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