(10-09-2021 05:55 AM)Johns1124 Wrote:  

(10-08-2021 10:52 PM)Yosef181 Wrote:  I don't frequently visit the other conference forums on here, but I hope we don't have people over there embarrassing themselves to the extent that herdfan129 and goliath74 constantly embarrass themselves here.

I'm also good with the USM + JMU + WKU + ODU combo to get to 14, if the AAC takes who Matt Brown is guessing they take. If Marshall makes the AAC move work, that's great for them. It won't be easy though. They would have to turn a $33M athletic budget into $55-$60M to match those remaining in the AAC. Marshall has a declining student enrollment. The state of West Virginia has the lowest average income in the country and a declining population. If the aim is to maintain an AAC budget for the next 10+ years, good luck to them.

" Marshall has a declining student enrollment."

Most schools have declining enrollment. MU is not off the average pace.

"The state of West Virginia has the lowest average income in the country and a declining population."

Very True. This would be accurate until you learn that roughly 60% of all MU students are Transit Students (Students that live 60-100 miles away from the campus), and Out of State students. MU, the locals actually make up a small portion of the total enrollment. Must of the student body is from elsewhere paying out of state tuition.

Can’t change demographics. Leadership at AState was telling me 10 years ago that we were approaching a period of declining enrollment. There was more than adequate data to see how many kids had been born 8-10 years previously and how many were in school.

AState’s VP for Finance tells me in making plans she gets the current data on 7th graders because that’s your freshman admission pool in five years.

Enrollment is down at many schools because the pool is smaller and because of how states are cutting back financing higher ed many large name brand public colleges are increasing how many freshmen they admit and increasing class size while increasing classes taught by TA’s and non-tenure track and part-time instructors to lower overhead.