UGA Strategic Planning

The Internal Environment

The current internal environment at the University of Georgia can be characterized by the following attributes ranged (and sometimes repeated) under the rubrics of Institutional; Enrollment; Students; Diversity and Resources:

Institutional:

A beautiful, well-manicured campus.
Lots of new facilities (roughly $500M worth over the past decade).
A strong tradition of interdisciplinary research in the life sciences.
A strong and well-known program of intercollegiate athletics.
The beginnings, over the past decade, of a recommittment to undergraduate teaching: In the fall of 1988, 287 full professors taught undergraduates. By the fall of 1999 that number had grown to 429, which means that well over 50% of our full professors were teaching undergraduates.
UGA offers over 3000 undergraduate courses; the top 50 produced 40% of its annual credit hours in the 1999 fall semester.
40 of the 50 courses producing the most undergraduate credit hours at UGA (98-99) are in Arts & Sciences; the other 10 are in Business.
UGA has a very decentralized (to colleges and schools) academic, management and fiscal structure; little central coordination of college priorities, including enrollment, research focus, or support for graduate students.
UGA differs from many other universities to which it is compared in that it does not have a college of engineering, nor does is have schools or colleges of medicine, nursing, public health, or other allied health professional school other than pharmacy.
UGA is situated in a moderately small college town, which has the benefits of small-town life, but lacks convenient logistical/geographical access to urban centers of commerce and business, large medical centers, and major air and rail transportation hubs.
While the focus of UGA's institutional culture may be on research, grad school, disciplines, majors, and institutional rankings, the focus of most external audiences is undergraduates and jobs.
Research dollars are declining in real numbers and relative to peers; UGA research ranking has dropped 20 places (from 66th in 1988 to 86th in 1998) in a decade (while Emory, for example, has moved from 59th to 36th). The major limitation contributing to this decline seems to be the limitations of adequate research space.
The University has "a significant (20 to 50%) deficit in research space, and the quality of a substantial portion of [existing] research space is poor" (Report from Provost's Committee on Research Space).
UGA increased the number of its students from fall 1991 to fall 1999 by over 2200 (an increase of 8%), while the number of faculty rose by only 35 (2%).
The principal internal governance structure, the University Council, is seen by some as weak and largely ineffectual; there is pressure by an energetic and socially responsive Staff Council to become a partner in institutional governance.
The Public Service and Outreach division in general, and the Georgia Center in particular, are seen by some as competing with, rather than complementing and supporting, the academic programs of the University.
Many feel that promotion and tenure guidelines are badly in need of revision; those standards and practices in some areas do little to encourage or reward international activity.
There exists a general sense among staff and faculty of micro-management by Board of Regents and their staff.
There is general sense by staff that they are accorded a second-class status and value by faculty and administrators.
There is no real tradition of institutional market research, planning or assessment.
UGA has a public image beyond the state dominated by football.

Enrollment:

66% of UGA freshmen graduate in 6 years; 69% graduate from somewhere in the USG in 6 years; 66% of full-time transfer students (most of whom are sophomores by our standards) graduate from UGA in 5 years.
Undergraduate applicant pool numbers look to be strong for the next decade: The number of Georgia high school graduates is projected to rise from 68,000 in 1999 to more than 90,000 in 2010. Roughly 13,000 of those 68,000 applied to UGA, and roughly 4,200 or 6% of those students enrolled at UGA.
Transfer numbers look to be steady and strong over the next decade.
Retention from freshman to sophomore year is close to 90%.
63% of undergraduate students are from Atlanta, 14.5% from out-of-state or country. (Atlanta's population is 63% of Georgia's.)
UGA has agreed to enroll 32,500 students by the fall of 2003; in the fall of 2000, UGA enrolled 31,000.
There is little public understanding of the value of foreign or out-of-state students; non-resident enrollment of new freshmen has dropped from 20% to 10% over past decade (overall non-resident enrollment is 21.8%).
Many leaders, including Regents, are pushing distance learning as an inexpensive alternative to traditional higher education despite wide-spread concerns within the higher education community about its quality and its cost.
There has been almost no increase in total number of professional and graduate students enrolled in past decade; slight decline in past 5 years; has been roughly 20% of student body for the past 20 years.
We have restricted undergraduate majors in roughly 60 programs.
6% of the UGA student body is black; Georgia is 28% black.

Credit Hours 1991-1999:

Credit hours produced by the Colleges of Agriculture and Arts and Sciences and Vet Med have been level for 5 years.
Business has grown by about 3% over the past 20 years, but by 33% over the past 5 years.
Education has declined steeply by almost 20% over the past 8 years.
Journalism has declined by a third over the past decade, and has been level for the past 5 years.
Environmental Design, Family and Consumer Sciences, and Forestry have grown a bit over the past 5 years, but are down this year.
Law is down a bit over the 10-year period.
Pharmacy is up by 15% over the decade and by 25% over the past six years.
Social Work has declined by 20% over the past six years.
The University has approximately the same number of faculty and is producing essentially the same number of credit hours in 1999-2000 it did in 1991-1992, though it has increased the number of students during the same period by over 2200 (28,691v. 30,912), or approximately 8%.
In that period, undergraduates grew by 1655, or 7%, and undergraduate credit hours grew by 2.3%.
Graduate and professional credit hours are essentially level for the past decade, and down by 11% over the past four years - while enrollment has increased by roughly 550 students.
The decrease in credit hours in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences and perhaps some other colleges in 1998-99 is at least partially due to the conversion to a semester calendar; we'll need more data from future years to understand if this is a trend.
The trend over the past five years or so of declining average credit hours per student is undoubtedly due in large measure to the way in which the HOPE Scholarship Program is constructed.

Students:

The Franklin College of Arts and Sciences and the Honors Program are developing an ambitious freshman seminar program that uses small classes to introduce first-year students to senior faculty and the academic life of a research university. In 2000-2001, this program offered some 150 seminars to 2250 freshmen.
The University has begun a promising new residence life enhancement program.
The University has developed an increasing number of study abroad programs (60) and participants (917) in 1999; = 3.7% of undergrads).
UGA residence life has 6,500 beds, and a 20 year plan to upgrade current facilities and add new ones, resulting in 12,000 beds by roughly 2018.
Surveys of enrolled students show generally high levels of satisfaction; lowest scores come from minority students who don't believe they are well supported by student services.
98% of new in-state freshmen are on HOPE Scholarship, which pays tuition and all fees (athletic; parking, health; student activity; others).
53% of the graduating class of 1998 transferred to UGA (i.e. did not begin their college experience as freshmen).
There is little real institutional initiative in continuing education, for-credit, distance learning or outreach to non-traditional students.
UGA students tending to take fewer credit hours per semester, in part in order to maintain HOPE eligibility.
Most residence halls are old and out-of-date.
There is a national and state perception that undergraduate education is being neglected; partly because of too many graduate student teachers, particularly foreign graduate students.
6% of the UGA student body is black; Georgia is 28% black.

Diversity:

Students:

85% of UGA's students are white, 6% are black, 4% Asian, and 1.3% are Hispanic.
54% of undergraduates, and 60% of graduate students, are female.

Faculty:

89% of 1,780 full-time professorial faculty are white; 5% are black; 4% are Asian; 1.3% are Hispanic. 26% are female.
971 of 1,149 full-time non-professorial faculty are white (84%).
989 of 1,092 tenured faculty at professor and associate professor level are white (90%).
3 of 559 male tenured full professors are black (0.5%).
5 of 86 female tenured full professors are black (5.8%).
8 of 645 male and female tenured full professors are black (1.2%).
14 of 310 male tenured associate professors are black (4.5%).
13 of 137 female tenured associate professors are black (9.5%).
27 of 447 male and female tenured associate professors are black (6%).
UGA is fifth in the nation among universities in the number of black tenured and tenure track faculty.

Staff:

7,906 of 9,589 full-time and part-time UGA employees are white (82%).
142 of 165 non-custodial and maintenance Athletic Department employees are white (86%).

Administrators:

9 of 10 assistant vice presidents are white (90%).
9 of 10 associate vice presidents are white (90%).
10 of 12 deans are white (83%).
5 of 6 vice presidents are white.
3 of 3 senior vice presidents are white (100%).

UGA Athletic Association:

15 of 16 head coaches are white.
32 of 39 assistant coaches are white.
13 of 15 administrative senior staff are white.
52 of 63 support staff are white.
30 of 32 clerical staff are white females.

Resources:

State allocations grew by 82% over the past decade: Among highest growth rate in the nation.
There is a steadily increasing gift dollar volume (average annual giving total has grown from less than $30M annually to +/- $50M over the past decade).
A huge benefit to the University is the Hope Scholarship Program and other dollars provided by the lottery, and the additional good students attracted by HOPE.
Over the next decade, faculty and staff retirements are projected to yield $82 million (in current dollars) in "turn-over" salary dollars: This will amount to over $100M in annual dollars over the course of the decade ending in 2010.
The city of Athens itself is an unparalleled resource for the University of Georgia: The students, alumni, faculty and staff of the University revere its tree-lined streets, historic homes and gardens, its music and nightclub scene and its small, semi-rural size and setting.
UGA's % of state-funded support for its total budget among the highest in the nation (45%, vis-a-vis UVA and Michigan's >10%).
The funding formula provides 5 times as much state allocation support for graduate student credit hours as for lower-division undergraduate credit hours; and 3 times as much as for upper-division credit hours.
The economy is wonderful; many folks worried about it continuing.
The future of state allocations looks to be "steady-state" for the better part of the decade.

Updated 12/09/2000