Effectiveness Uncertain

The interim president at the University of Southern Maine has suggested that faculty members call students who have yet to re-enroll and convince them to do so, in order to head off potentially disastrous enrollment drops.

Interim Prez David Flanagan, on the job for three weeks after leaving his role as the CEO of a power company, said he got the idea from a couple of professors who were already calling students. The different faculty reps quoted in the Inside Higher Education story seem to think that there's no harm with a request to pitch in and help, as long as it stays a request and as long as participation is voluntary. They hedge their bets and say that most of the response has been positive, meaning that there may have been some faculty grumps who think that the admissions office is supposed to do that sort of thing.

I can see several sides. On the one hand, yes the admissions office is supposed to do that sort of thing. On the other hand, Herr and/or Frau Doktor Professor, your life of light workload and pleasant community living depends on those late-teen/early-20s showing up in enough numbers to make sure the checks with which you get paid bounceth not. On yet another hand, a quick scan of the directory of the University of Southern Maine shows several administrative offices that would seem to have a big fat bupkis to do with teaching and yet which have close to 20 people listed on staff without counting administrative assistants or work study students.

The Faculty Senate chair said one problem could be that several popular courses are already filled, meaning that the feet-draggers may wait the school out a semester or so until they can take what they want.

In any event, I don't know if Interim Prez Flanagan's proposal will be all that successful. If I'm a college-aged person who's been on the fence about enrolling, having one of my profs nag me on the phone about it might not be a winning strategy for my retention.