University Times

Although the number of students who took summer classes at Pitt this summer declined by 1.3 percent compared with summer 1995, numbers were up in terms of total credits taken (a 2.6 percent improvement) and tuition revenue (up 7 percent, outpacing the 4.5 percent tuition hikes at most Pitt schools since last summer).

Vice Provost Robert Pack, whose responsibility area includes the six-month-old Office of University Summer Sessions, called the increases "small but very encouraging. They represent the first increase we've seen in our third-term enrollment base in at least five years.

"We have not only stopped the decline, which was our primary goal for this summer, but we actually had a small increase," he said.

After years of declining summer enrollments, Pitt in 1996 replaced its traditional summer calendar (one 14-week summer term plus two seven-week sessions) with a wider range of options this year.

Schools and departments could stick with the traditional summer term and/or choose among seven shorter sessions, including an intensive four-week "intersession" in May.

Pitt also created the two-person Office of University Summer Sessions to coordinate efforts to boost enrollments.

Those efforts began to pay off this summer, based on the all-but-final enrollment figures available this week. ("Final final" summer numbers will be released in mid-September.) The figures show that: * The number of credits taken by students at Pitt this summer increased from 80,615 credits last year to 82,714 in 1996. University administrators consider credit totals to be the best yardstick for enrollment because the numbers aren't skewed by tuition hikes or year-to-year variations in the percentages of part-time and full-time students. Pitt's credits total for the summer peaked at 89,554 in 1992. Since then, most summer enrollment statistics here dropped or stagnated until summer 1996.

* Summer tuition revenue increased from $19,680,369 to $21,069,373.

* The number of students who took Pitt classes this summer declined from 13,355 to 13,177. But that was more than offset by the increase in credits taken. In 1995, each summer student took an average of 6.0 credits. In 1996, the average was 6.3 credits per student.

Efforts by the Summer Sessions office to recruit more non-Pitt students to take summer courses here also apparently paid off.

Compared with 1995, the number of visiting students increased by 13 percent this summer, from 476 to 540. Those 540 students took 2,480 credits, a 38 percent increase over last summer's credit total for visiting students.

Darlene Zellers Samelko, director of Summer Sessions and Continuing Education, said that "a substantial number" of the visiting students were from Carnegie Mellon University, although she said her office hasn't calculated the exact number yet.

"In previous summers, CMU students were still in their spring semester when our first summer session began," she explained. "Because we delayed the start of our first six-week summer session by one week, that allowed more CMU students to enroll here in courses offered during the first half of the summer." The increase in non-Pitt students brought in an additional $160,000 in tuition revenue over last summer, according to Samelko. She said the increase was more than enough to cover all costs associated with the new Summer Sessions office, including salaries and benefits, marketing and the design and printing of a new summer classes schedule. Those expenses added up to $157,000, Semelko said.

Pitt offered approximately 3,000 courses at its five campuses this summer, a 25 percent increase over the number last summer. About half of those courses were offered through the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS).

FAS was one of several schools that took advantage of an optional profit-sharing plan introduced this year. In exchange for assuming the risk of financial loss if enrollments were poor, academic departments were allowed to keep 50 percent of increases in tuition revenues this summer over summer 1995.

Samelko said the incentive plan inspired a "one for all, and all for one" spirit among department faculties.

"The departments as a whole benefited from being able to retain a share of revenue increases," she said, "but it was up to individual faculty members to make the plan work. They were the ones who had to agree to teach during the summer, and they were the ones who had to update their courses to accommodate the lengths of the new sessions." Because of the risks and added paperwork of the profit-sharing plan, most academic units did not choose to participate in the plan this summer, Samelko noted.

Final figures on the money allotted to schools through the incentive plan won't be available until next month, she said.

— Bruce Steele