The percentage of minority students in the Wake County school system increased this year, continuing the trend of the state's largest school system becoming a majority minority district.

Recently released figures show that minority students now account for 50.7 percent of Wake's 146,689 students, up from 50.5 percent last year. White students now account for 49.3 percent of the enrollment, the second year in a row they've been in the minority.

The percentage of minority students has sharply increased in Wake over the past 20 years. In the 1991-92 school year, minority students accounted for 30.7 percent of the enrollment.

Should UNC limit enrollment? Reduce it, even?

Gasp!

This isn't the sort of idea that has ever gotten much serious consideration in North Carolina, a state that prides itself on providing an affordable and accessible education to its citizens.

But these woeful economic times are changing the minds of decision-makers. In today's paper, a story about why this may not be the worst time for the state to consider scaling back enrollment.

One note: There's an error in the story that will be corrected. There are 58 community college campuses in North Carolina, not 56.

 The nursing school at UNC-Chapel Hill is cutting enrollment 25 percent to save money.

That means the school will admit 152 students next year, down from 208.

The enrollment reduction starts with students admitted for the summer semester that starts in May.

The move is a reaction to ongoing budget pressures, including a 5 percent permanent cut instituted by the university in January and additional cuts expected to reach as high as 15 percent.

The move is a rare, tangible example of how the ongoing budget pressures are restricting access to public higher education in North Carolina. UNC system campuses generally try not to restrict access to their programs.

“We are committed to offering high-quality, rigorous and safe programs for entry into nursing practice at the baccalaureate and advanced practice levels,” said School of Nursing Dean Kristen M. Swanson. “The budget challenges have left us little alternative but to reduce the number of students we enroll.”

The enrollment reductions must be implemented now because postponing them until January 2012 would not allow adequate savings to meet budget requirements, according to a news release. The school continues to explore additional means to absorb the anticipated budget cuts.

School of Nursing students have two options for preparation to enter into practice as a registered nurse (RN): the Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) six-semester program or the Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing (ABSN) four-semester program for applicants with a baccalaureate or higher degree in another field of study. Together, the BSN and ABSN programs have been graduating approximately 200 new nurses each year.

The projected need for nurses continues to grow because of health-care reform, the health-care needs of the aging Baby Boomer generation and an aging nursing workforce.

“Given the nursing shortage it is truly unfortunate to find ourselves reducing enrollments to the levels we realized 10 years ago,” Swanson said. “However, we cannot sacrifice the quality or safety of nursing education, so our difficult choice was to reduce the number of students.”

The Wake County school system's market share of school-age children in the county shrunk this past school year to 82.9 percent.

Newly figures released indicate that for the 2009-10 school year, the school system had 139,599 of the county's estimated 168,384 students. This 82.9 percent figure is down from 83.3 percent in 2008-09.

You can calculate the market share because new statewide home school figures were released today. The number of registered home schools has doubled statewide in the past decade to 43,316.

For much of the decade, N.C. Central University flung its doors wide open, welcoming scores of new students - prompted by a UNC system mandate to increase enrollment.

Problem was, those students weren't all ready for college. Plenty dropped out, leaving NCCU with a stain on its graduation rate data. From 2004 to 2008, just 18 percent of NCCU students graduated within four years. About 38 percent managed in five years, and about half did it in six years.

Now, university leaders are re-making the undergraduate academic experience, shifting from the enrollment model from quantity to quality. They're slowing the enrollment growth, a move necessary in part because the campus infrastructure can't withstand continued expansion, and looking for ways to admit better students.

As noted in today's Chapel Hill News, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools released their annual Opening of Schools Report last Thursday.

Highlights of the report include decreased enrollment, more Asian students than ever, bigger classrooms and fewer new hires. There's also information on budgets, test scores, facility maintenance and more.

To read the full report, click on the document linked to at the bottom of this post and download the PDF.

Documents:

The school district's market share dipped to 83.3 percent of the school age children in the county.

New state figures released today show that there were 3,771 home schools registered in Wake this past school year with an estimated enrollment of 7,571 students. In 2007-08, there were 3,548 registered home schools in Wake with an estimated enrollment of 7,059 students.

The new home-school data makes it possible to calculate Wake's new market share.

Applicants to UNC's law school recently got some good luck - prematurely and, in many cases, incorrectly.

Thanks to a computer glitch, the law school's admissions office recently e-mailed about 250 people, inviting them to events for newly-admitted students.

Problem was, that invitation was sent to the wrong e-mail list. The 250 applicants who received the invitation on March 18 had not yet heard whether they had been admitted, because their files were still under review.

The e-mail was supposed to have gone to another group, also of about 250 students, who had already been admitted.

The mistake was discovered within 15 minutes and a follow-up message was quickly sent out, said Michael States, the law school's assistant dean for admissions.

States said most folks who received the mistaken email weren't bothered by it. Some figured it was a mistake because they had not yet received an admissions decision. 

"Most of the people were wonderful about it," States said. "One person said it was the second time it happened to him that day. I didn't ask what the other school was."

But it did cause some rumblings on at least one law school message board where some applicants wrote about their confusion.

Wrote one: "Way to ruin my day, UNC."

On the bright side, UNC-CH didn't do what the University of California-San Diego just did by mistake. UCSD this week accidentally offered admission to all 46,000 of its applicants.

That's 29,000 more students than it wants to enroll. 

I don't see this happening in North Carolina, what with the state's historic dedication to access and the public university system's continuing enrollment growth.

With that caveat: The California State University system plans to deal with crippling budget cuts by reducing enrollment. This is a transcript from a recent teleconference in which Charles Reed, the Cal State system's chancellor, proposed reducing enrolllment.
"We can't continue to admit more and more students without receiving adequate funding," Reed said in explaining a plan to reduce enrollment within the system by 10,000 students.

Reed points out that the 23-campus system is over-enrolled by those 10,000 students, meaning that's how many students the state university system educates without receiving any funding from the state of California to do so.

That hasn't been a problem to this point in North Carolina because the General Assembly has committed to fully funding enrollment growth each year.

Breaking news from Chapel Hill: UNC-CH's freshman class is talented.

So went the message this week from Stephen Farmer, the undergraduate admissions director. Each fall, Farmer gets to tell university trustees about all the talented youngsters calling Chapel Hill home for the next four years.

A few highlights: