In the current economic climate, not everyone is losing business. Long Island’s public colleges and universities are receiving record numbers of applications as students who may have otherwise chosen to study at a private institution are going public.
“As a flagship public university, the price-to-value ratio we offer is incredible,” said Matt Whelan, assistant provost for admission and financial aid for Stony Brook University in Stony Brook. “Undergraduate tuition is under $5,000 per year for a New York resident. Schools we compete against cost five to seven times as much.”
Israel Malinowitzer, director of careers and student services for East Islip High School, said the economy is keeping students closer to home this year. “We’re seeing more students applying to state colleges and to Long Island colleges in particular,” he said.
According to Whelan, Stony Brook is on pace to receive 27,000 applications for fall 2009. Its year-to-date figures show that freshman applications are up 11.5 percent over last year, and a record number of them are coming from New York. “I can intuit that some students who were planning to go out of state will be staying in New York because of the economy,” Whelan said.
The SUNY College at Old Westbury has seen a 23 percent increase in first-year and transfer applications over the same period last year, said Michael Kinane, assistant to the president for advancement.
“We are hearing that students who normally would make the choice to go away need to stay closer to home for economic reasons,” Kinane said. “We’re also hearing of a large number of students who are coming back to school because the job market is getting bad.”
Applications to Farmingdale State College are also up by 23 percent over last year so far. For the 2008-09 school year, with the economy faltering and budget cuts looming, Farmingdale had to cut off applications last June, rather than accepting them into September as it had done in the past. “Applications still rose by 10 percent for the year,” said Patrick Calabria, vice president for institutional advancement for Farmingdale State College. “They would have gone up exponentially if we had kept it open.”
However, the poor economy is not the only reason for increases in applications to Long Island’s public four-year institutions. Stony Brook, Old Westbury and Farmingdale have enjoyed increasing demand for several years.
“Enrollment at Farmingdale has been booming since 2000,” Calabria said. “Since that year, enrollment is up 62 percent while applications are up 72 percent.”
According to Whelan, Stony Brook’s total applications have nearly doubled, from 15,000, in the past five years. Applications at Old Westbury increased by 38 percent from 2006 to 2008, Kinane said.
All of the institutions point to improvements to their reputation and new and expanded programs, in addition to their value, as reasons for the increased demand. Old Westbury, for instance, recently received full accreditation for its education program and added graduate degree programs in education. Farmingdale, which became a baccalaureate (four-year) institution in 1993, has shaken its image of the agricultural college it once was and offers growing programs in bioscience and business, in addition to a popular nursing program.
But there’s no doubt the current economy is contributing to increasing demand, which, due to tightening state budgets, schools can’t accommodate.
“We would like to expand this fall to meet the increased demand, but the challenge is the financial side,” Kinane said. “Given the condition of the state budget, we are anticipating only modest growth of 1 to 2 percent. If you don’t have the funds to hire professors to teach more classes, you can’t add classes.”
Farmingdale was at 110 percent of its enrollment goal for the current year and does not expect to have the budget needed to grow, while Stony Brook will keep its incoming freshman total at 2,700. “We have reached our capacity in the number of new freshmen we can serve,” Whelan said.