Given this, the university needs to engage in state of the art enrollment management practices. Members of the St. Thomas Community overwhelmingly prefer to keep undergraduate enrollment at current levels. We found that faculty members clearly favor maintaining the current enrollment level. They expressed concerns about maintaining academic quality especially in light of the large number of adjuncts. The faculty also raised concerns that increasing enrollments and the growth that accompanies it lead to greater fragmentation and loss of community.
Students also favor maintaining current enrollment levels or even shrinking a bit in size.
Staff members expressed concerns about the ability of St. Thomas to deliver needed services and our ability to maintain good public relations with the neighborhood. Resource constraints would make enrollment growth difficult. Our research repeatedly reinforced the claim that current resources do not meet the needs of our present enrollment. We believe that in the next three to five years, it would be prudent to maintain a steady undergraduate enrollment while increasing resources to appropriate levels. Recent enrollment growth has resulted in an increasing reliance on adjuncts.