Enhancing Revenue and Efficiency
To prepare for upcoming state budget cuts, Coastal Carolina University faculty are planning revenue enhancements and efficiencies.For revenue enhancements, faculty are reaching out to previously underserved populations, especially students with Associate of Arts degrees (AA) or Associate of Science degrees (AS) from community or technical colleges. These degrees are clearly separate from applied degrees such as cosmetology, HVAC or culinary arts in that they prepare students of two-year colleges to proceed directly to four-year colleges and pursue bachelor's degrees. For the AA and AS population, Faculty Senate recently agreed to waive the General Education Core. The Senate’s action allows such students to complete their baccalaureate degrees more efficiently at Coastal Carolina University. We believe we are the only university in South Carolina that is reaching out to this population with such a waiver, although this is a practice in many other states such as Virginia, Maryland and Ohio. Students from our technical colleges pay full tuition (either in-state or out-of-state) when they are admitted as juniors and seniors, so our service to them becomes a revenue enhancement.
To enhance efficiency, faculty are considering an alignment of our academic schedule to those of Horry-Georgetown Technical College (HGTC) and to the Horry County School District (with regard to the first day of classes). The joint Bridge program that we operate with HGTC, in which the more than 115 Bridge students live in our dorms and take their first year of coursework at HGTC, requires that we have similar calendars with HGTC to efficiently service those students. The administration is also examining a move toward scheduling more of our daytime classes offered now on only Mondays and Wednesdays to be scheduled MWF. This will open more than 200 sections in which classes can be offered.
In anticipation of enrollment shortfall last year (which did not materialize), we had most of our faculty who were not teaching 4/4 loads Spring 2009 and Fall 2009 add an extra class one of those two semesters without additional compensation. We also had deans and other faculty administrators assume additional teaching duties. We have now resumed previous load levels for the faculty.
I welcome your ideas regarding additional measures we may take to ensure efficiency while continuing the high level of individual attention that distinguishes study at Coastal Carolina University.
