quote:
Spoke to a guy a few years ago at an Economic conference who was on the board of alumni for the school of Engineering at Alabama. He told me he expected Alabama to shift away from its emphasis on growing enrollment through out of state kids... basically said the plan which had been in place for a decade or more had not produced the results the school had hoped it would. He said too often kids were coming to Bama... Having a great 4 years... but then they headed back to where they came from... many not putting much thought into where they went to school within a few years. Sure enough... Bama's number of incoming new undergrad students has been shrinking since its peak back in 2016: 2016: 7,559 2017: 7,407 2018: 6,663 2019: 6,764 2020: 6,507 And with that, so has the percentage of out of state kids: 2016: 68.1% 2017: 67.5% 2018: 65.9% 2019: 62.6% 2020: 58.5% Sure enough... incoming new undergrads in 2016 totaled 5,089.... in 2020 that number was down to just 3,772. Meanwhile the number of in-state new undegrads increased from 2,412 up to 2,701 during the same period. It's obvious Bama is retreating from their plan which seemed to start kicking in back around 2005 or 2006.

This is exactly right. The emphasis now with the new President is to increase in-state students and increase Graduate school students to bring in even more research $$$. We are slowly getting there and the research $$$ has been booming lately. It was silly to think that these Out of state students would actually consider staying in this state for their careers. This in turn has absolutely KILLED our in-state recruiting for the larger metros. When I graduated high school in 2005 in Huntsville, there were more kids going to UA than anywhere. Last year I believe AU doubled the amount of kids going to AU than kids going to UA in Huntsville. An absolute shame and it shows in the workforce too.

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Posted by BHMKyle

Birmingham, AL

Member since Feb 2013

5076 posts

Posted on 9/8/21 at 3:01 pm to cdur86

quote:
This in turn has absolutely KILLED our in-state recruiting for the larger metros. When I graduated high school in 2005 in Huntsville, there were more kids going to UA than anywhere. Last year I believe AU doubled the amount of kids going to AU than kids going to UA in Huntsville. An absolute shame and it shows in the workforce too.

I see it around me as well. I live in Birmingham... just south of downtown. The number of students going to Alabama and Auburn used to be fairly even, but in recent years is easily 60/40 in Auburn's favor... and its been this way for over a decade.

The Over-the-Mountain area of Birmingham is the type of place that most kids who grew up there want to come back and raise their families there. I've often wondered what the impact of 10+ years of Auburn having the advantage will do, not just in those 10 years but in future years as well.

When I'm at the park, you just see more kids running around with Auburn gear on. Alabama still has a huge presence for sure, but the area seems far more pro-Auburn than it did when I first came to Birmingham years ago.

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Posted by Ptins944

Member since Jan 2019

1477 posts

Posted on 9/8/21 at 3:32 pm to cdur86

Good Post, OP!!!

I'm an old...

I like the last list best.

Supports my belief that if you can get into Texas, you go to Texas. Those who can get into the Ivy's, Stanford, Service Academys, or any other school with specific programs they want, tend to go there.

I knew quite a few that left Texas for other places that had less "distractions" than Austin, a number of which went on to be CEO's at their companies. Playing school is hard in Austin.

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