University president: Impact on Penn State enrollment, fundraising minimal so far during pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on Penn State’s enrollment and fundraising efforts has been minimal so far, according to university President Eric Barron.
Barron explained Friday afternoon, during his public report to the board of trustees, that enrollment and fundraising have decreased compared to the previous year, while deferrals and leaves of absence have increased — but the changes have not been a large cause for concern.
Here’s a closer look:
- Fall enrollment: University Park has seen a decrease of 942 students compared to last year and now stands at 46,423. Overall, Penn State enrollment including all campuses decreased by 1,847 to 89,145 overall. That’s a decrease of about 2% compared to this time last year.
- Deferrals/Leaves of absence: Last year, 112 University Park students took deferrals while 313 took leaves of absence. This year, those numbers increased to 555 and 650, respectively. Across all Penn State campuses, deferrals jumped from 428 to 1,169 and leaves of absence increased from 698 to 1,141. The increase was high based on the percentage, but the numbers still remained manageable, Barron said.
- Fundraising: In the first two months of this fiscal year (July and August), there were $35.2 million in charitable receipts — compared to $35.3 million the year before. In commitments, Penn State raised $32.5 million during those two months this fiscal year, compared to last year’s $34.7 million. The number of overall donors and alumni donors is also nearly identical: 12,280 donors and 5,650 alumni donors this year compared to last year’s 12,133 and 5,654.
“We are off to a strong start in 2021,” Barron said, referring to the 2020-21 fiscal year. “This suggests that where circumstances have changed rather dramatically, our development staff has not paused and our alumni and commitment to Penn State have not paused.”
Although the university is still reeling from multi-million-dollar financial losses and new costs associated with course delivery and safety, Barron intimated it was a relief that fundraising and enrollment at least started off strong.
Barron also revealed a record $381 million was raised in donations last year for the university, while $213,000 was raised for campus food pantries and another $650,000 was raised for the Student Care and Advocacy Emergency Fund, which assisted students in need during the pandemic.
As far as student account payments and financial aid, those were a little trickier to calculate. Although student account revenue decreased 5.6% to $386.9 million, tuition payments and due dates can alter some of those numbers in the short term.
“It will take us a little bit longer to know truly what those differences are,” Barron added. “But again, this is a reason for some level of optimism as we see clear signs of how it is that students out there value that Penn State degree.”
Course delivery
With the COVID-19 pandemic, Penn State has had to deliver its courses a little differently this semester. Namely, it’s moved a considerable number of classes online.
Although these numbers were originally released over the summer, here’s an updated look from Friday:
- 4,868 (18.6%) of course sections are fully in-person
- 7,416 (28.3%) of course sections are mixed mode, which means a hybrid of in-person and remote learning
- 9,658 (36.9%) of course sections are remote synchronous
- 4,237 (16.1%) of course sections are remote asynchronous
In other words, 81.4% of classes have some online component while 53% are entirely online.
Research expenditures
For the first time in school history, research expenditures surpassed $1 billion, Barron said.
In the 2019-20 fiscal year, $633 million came from federal funds with another $375 million from university, industry and state sources. That’s an overall increase of 4.1% compared to the previous year.
Barron said activity at core research facilities is now at about 80% of what it was pre-pandemic.
Residence life
According to Barron, the residence halls on University Park’s campus are just at 72% capacity.
Some 10,155 students are living on campus this semester, which means 36,268 live off-campus this semester or are learning remotely.
At the commonwealth campuses, on-campus living is at 60% capacity with 3,617 total students.
