First-year and transfer enrollment at Rutgers-Camden is down 27%, and faculty are concerned

Enrollment at Rutgers-Camden among first-year and transfer students has plummeted 27% compared with the same time last year, according to figures from president Jonathan Holloway’s office that were released by the faculty union late Friday.

Faculty leaders and union officials say the problem is in large part due to mistakes in the rollout of a new software system that caused delays in the admissions process throughout Rutgers’ system, but most significantly for Camden.

As of Aug. 15, Rutgers-Camden, one of three campuses in the system, had 1,261 first-year and transfer students enrolled, down 469 students from the same time last year.

Faculty are concerned the drop will force classes to be canceled, limiting students’ choices, and cause adjunct faculty to lose their jobs.

“I’ve already had to cancel some classes taught by adjunct faculty,” said Tyler Hoffman, chair of the Rutgers-Camden English and communication department, who said he was told about the software problem by his campus leadership. “It comes so late in the summer that many of us are kind of left scrambling.”

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The drop comes as many colleges nationally struggle with an undergraduate enrollment decline of 1.4 million, or 9.4%, since the pandemic, according to a May report by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. And some local schools, including Temple, expect to be down this fall, though not anywhere near 27%.

“When classes are canceled, we see adjunct faculty losing their income because they have no security,” said Rebecca Givan, president of Rutgers AAUP-AFT, the faculty union, “and we see students who don’t have the full breadth of course offerings.”

Faculty also are questioning why the enrollment drop is uneven among campuses; Rutgers-Newark is down about 8%, while New Brunswick — the main campus and by far the largest — is up 5%.

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“Our sense is that students were kept on the New Brunswick wait list for a long time rather than being referred to Camden in a more timely manner,” Givan said.

That may have led students to go elsewhere rather than considering Rutgers-Camden, she said. The union said in a letter to Holloway on Monday that it heard the “software error” may have delayed acceptance letters and financial-aid packages from reaching students. Union leaders asked Holloway to explain why the enrollment drop occurred so they could share answers with their community.

“There were all sorts of glitches and missed deadlines through this system, and I think it’s a huge part of the problem that we’re going through,” Hoffman said.

Spokespeople from Rutgers-Camden and New Brunswick did not respond to requests for comment.

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In his letter, Holloway acknowledged concern over the enrollment drop and attached statistics on enrollment at each campus. But he did not address the union’s questions about software problems and delays.

“The Rutgers administration is concerned about the current enrollment numbers for new students in Camden and Newark, which are related to a number of factors, certainly including the impact of the pandemic and the trends in college enrollment across the country over the past several years,” Holloway wrote. “It is important to understand that enrollment numbers are still fluid, and we do not close the books on enrollment for the fall semester until several weeks into the semester.”

Holloway wrote that Rutgers is especially concerned about an 11% drop in transfer students across the system — including 9% in New Brunswick — and is working to address concerns, including moving toward adopting the Common Application to make it easier to apply to Rutgers. Over all three campuses, Rutgers is expected to enroll 14,332 first-year and transfer students this fall, down 1.1%.

Even before the pandemic, colleges were struggling as the available number of high school graduates dropped, with projections for more loss later this decade. Earlier this summer, Temple, which enrolled about 27,000 undergraduates last year, said that enrollment was expected to be down about 1,500 this fall. The Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, which has lost more than one-quarter of its enrollment since 2010, last fall recorded its biggest one-year enrollment decline in more than a decade. Projections for this fall were not available Saturday.

Not all schools are down. West Chester University, part of the state system, announced Friday it would welcome 3,000 first-year students, the most in the school’s history.

At Rutgers-Camden, faculty worry that the enrollment drop is indicative of long-standing neglect they perceive from the flagship campus and will only worsen inequities among the campuses. Last year, the union said the university’s attempt to address equity with salary adjustments shortchanged professors, especially those on the Camden campus.

Holloway in his letter asserted that students on all the campuses are treated fairly.

“I must take strong exception to your suggestion that any of our students are second-class,” he wrote. “A Rutgers student is a Rutgers student and part of a community of scholars that takes pride in the achievements of every student on every campus.”

But Givan, the union leader, asserted that Rutgers-Camden students “feel like second-class citizens, and that matters.”

Manu Chander, associate professor of English at Newark and president of the faculty union chapter there, said the Newark campus also has been treated as if it is less than New Brunswick.

“It’s a question of racial justice,” Chander said, given that the Newark campus has long been considered a minority-serving institution, meaning at least 50% are students of color, and Camden in February was designated the same.

The union asked Holloway to commit to running classes in Camden and Newark with fewer students if necessary and no budget cuts as a result of the enrollment drop. Some classes with 30 students in prior years stand in the single digits, union leaders said.

“Students may not graduate on time, forcing them to pay extra tuition and miss opportunities for employment that could affect their ability to support their families,” the union wrote in the letter to Holloway. “They will also miss out on courses that might change their perspective, career aspirations, and understanding of the world, since, as you know, every class has the potential to deliver these.”

Holloway responded that while Rutgers is committed to avoiding “any disruption for students in terms of graduating” on time, “it would not be appropriate to issue a mandate that every class should be run regardless of enrollment.”