In terms of straight credentials, the incoming freshman class of 2015 boasts some impressive all-time highs, but whether they academically outperform their predecessors could very well ride on factors beyond their control. 

With enormous state budget cuts rattling through the UNC system, many students will see opportunities such as financial aid, scholarships, out-of-class resources and overall class availability significantly curtailed.  Among other difficulties, university officials expect that many incoming students will be forced to wait an extra year to accumulate all the needed courses to graduate with degrees that traditionally take four years.

By nearly all available metrics, the freshman class this fall exceeds, and sometimes eclipses, its predecessors.  Their record-low 53% admission rate is unprecedented, and far lower than the 80%  of  the applicant pool who were admitted in 2001.  This trend stems most visibly from a record applicant pool of more than 11,000 – the first to ever reach pentuple digits – combined with an average high school GPA of 3.97 and an average SAT score of 1176, both of which are also all-time highs.

However, Assistant Enrollment Provost Dr. Terry Curran cautions that budget cuts and a troubled economy could tell the real story four years from now.  The higher-than-usual number of transfer students as well as freshmen from New Hanover and its neighboring counties likely already reflects the current economy as well, with more community college graduates opting to stay in school and more local high school graduates commuting from home in lieu of paying rent.

“It’s about what we’re do now, not over the next year but over the next few months, that’s going to make the real difference,” said Curran.

Curran also stressed the importance of viewing the encouraging data for the incoming class in terms of “what we were doing right back in 2007,” as opposed to a guarantee of continued positive development.  Indeed, when last spring’s graduating class was first coming to campus the state economy was in very different shape, especially on a state level, before state budget deficits compelled the General Assembly to authorize a 15.8 percent budget cut for the entire UNC school system, totaling $414 million.

With a nearly $16 million cut from UNCW’s annual budget this year, cuts to financial aid, scholarships, grants, resources, personnel and available classes are inevitable.  This year’s budget cuts have resulted in the loss of 147 jobs at UNCW, 78 of which were faculty positions, although all but 24 of those jobs are positions that opened over the past few years and were left vacant.  According to Dr. Curran, this could be negatively reflected in measures such as freshman/sophomore retention, as some students decide after a year or two that UNCW is not providing them with the education they expected.  The problem, however, will likely prove to be a systemic one, with all UNC system schools taking more or less proportionally equal budget cuts.  Students looking out of state face similar problems as well.  Maryland, Virginia and New Jersey, three mid-Atlantic states whose combined numbers account for the majority of UNCW’s undergraduate out of state freshmen, are all facing similar economic troubles that have propelled talks of budget cuts to their public university systems.

However, Dr. Curran offered hope that UNCW has the ability to benefit to an extent from the current economic crisis as more people are going back to school after being shut out of the workforce and more community college graduates are looking to transfer to get four-year degrees to increase their prospects in a difficult job market.