The September 15 Board of Visitors (BOV) meeting included President Kelly discussing the issues facing the university and the steps being taken to resolve them, as well as the BOV addressing Athletics and Financial Aid.
The first issue that President Kelly addressed was the tuition increase – about 4% for in-state students and about 8% for out-of-state students.
President Kelly also mentioned the university must “solidify our scholarship base long term,” and, “I plan to have the staff look at the funding model for the PLP program in an effort to fund our PLP and Honors commitments.”
However, President Kelly believes the biggest threat to the university is the larger, Ph.D. offering universities which are impacting CNU’s enrollment numbers. He said the bigger universities had the funds to invest in the “arms race” that is higher education. This was later backed up by the report from the student life committee which also mentioned the growth of big public universities. Some examples include George Mason, Virginia Tech, and VCU which all have grown.
To help admission numbers, CNU is introducing a few new additions to the campus. The first is the Bachelor of Arts and Education Degree. This will allow students the opportunity to teach in four years instead of five. This program will be offered beginning in the fall of 2024. Dr. Ward, one of the people behind this said, “The idea that we have an opportunity in this room to truly impact not only the captains that go forward from CNU but teachers everywhere because whenever you have a good teacher as a student you have the opportunity for greatness.”
Another addition to the university beginning in the Spring of 2024 will be the ability for students to see textbook costs when registering for classes. Provost Kidd said, “Classes will be indicating whether a class has a low-cost, no-cost textbook option available to it so that’ll be indicated on the schedule of classes.” This will allow students to sign up for classes that meet their financial needs.
Another thing that is being eyed for the future of CNU is a potential nursing program. This program would be in conjecture with Riverside where students would graduate from CNU with a Bachelor of Science in biology and with one more year of learning at Riverside Health, they would then graduate with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing. The university believes this would help with their enrollment goals.
This year at CNU there were 1163 freshmen admitted. They had an acceptance rate of a little over 80% to reach their goal of admitted freshmen, which they did. They brought in 154 transfer students and 93 graduate students.
Now that the state has finalized the budget, the Board is hopeful to receive funding that they can use to put into different areas at CNU.
