David Harris-UNI AD

[BigTurk]

ISU's enrollment has been on the decline too. That very much has to do with demographics and not necessarily who is leading the institution. In other words, ISU enrolls a very large percentage of Iowans and the number of traditional college age students in Iowa is decreasing. Also keep in mind the number of International students has been decreasing each year since 2016. COVID has accelerated the drop in International student enrollment.

 

[Gunnerclone]

Here lies UNI's problem

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Also doesn’t help that all those new students are Iowa fans that are scared of going to a large Big 10 school.

 

[1UNI2ISU]

Also to note, the coming enrollment cliff in the 2025-27 Midwest high school classes is very significant and very real and that is going to hurt everyone.

The one on the horizon in the late 2030s is catastrophic.

 

[NorthCyd]

ISU's enrollment has been on the decline too. That very much has to do with demographics and not necessarily who is leading the institution. In other words, ISU enrolls a very large percentage of Iowans and the number of traditional college age students in Iowa is decreasing. Also keep in mind the number of International students has been decreasing each year since 2016. COVID has accelerated the drop in International student enrollment.



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I'm not saying you're wrong, because I think you're right about demographics, but I disagree that the drop doesn't have to do with leadership. Without Leath's push to increase enrollment I don't think you would have seen such a drastic drop in enrollment and would rather have seen a flattening in enrollment. It looks more dramatic because of the policies of the previous administration along with the impacts of covid.

 

[jmb]

IDK, Kirk Ferentz seems to be doing pretty well for himself.

I think @Rabbuk meant athletic director not athletic dictator(KF) or athletic ****(fran).

 

[Saul_T]

UNI Grad/Fan here...UNI's athletic department has been in "shambles" for a long time. They need to figure out and fix attendance. Back in my day you had to get to a basketball game early to get a ticket, now they just look dead. Having free admission to all athletic events was awesome, but it's pointless if no one uses it.

 

[isufbcurt]

ISU's enrollment has been on the decline too. That very much has to do with demographics and not necessarily who is leading the institution. In other words, ISU enrolls a very large percentage of Iowans and the number of traditional college age students in Iowa is decreasing. Also keep in mind the number of International students has been decreasing each year since 2016. COVID has accelerated the drop in International student enrollment.



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Just my opinion but ISU needs to recruit more and try to get to the 35K or more number consistently. 35K should be ISU's floor.

 

[jmb]

I will clarify that in no way do I think David is a bad person and all the personal interactions I've had with him have been very cordial. He's a good guy in the wrong job. It's actually more of an indictment on University leadership and the BOR than it is of David himself.

We've just had several long time volunteers and boosters pull support or stop donating time in the last 6 months. We were seeing noticeable and costly declines in attendance and marketing well before the pandemic began. Long time staff leaving athletics administration altogether and David's hand picked number 2 leaving because he didn't believe that there was enough of a supportive environment for him to get to the point where he could be an AD.

The cherry on top for a lot of UNI people is the current West Gym issue.

I appreciate everyone's input. UNI, at one point, was one of the best mid-major jobs in the country and there's a lot of people that would like to see it back to that level.

tldr

 

[Gunnerclone]

Just my opinion but ISU needs to recruit more and try to get to the 35K or more number consistently. 35K should be ISU's floor.

Dang I don’t know if campus can sustain that number. tOSU has 50k and the campus is like 4X bigger than ISU.

 

[BigTurk]

I'm not saying you're wrong, because I think you're right about demographics, but I disagree that the drop doesn't have to do with leadership. Without Leath's push to increase enrollment I don't think you would have seen such a drastic drop in enrollment and would rather have seen a flattening in enrollment. It looks more dramatic because of the policies of the previous administration along with the impacts of covid.

I see your point and that makes sense. Some of the Colleges at ISU are twisting themselves into pretzels trying to figure out what to do. I don't think leadership in some of the Colleges is particularly strong either especially regarding recruitment and retention.

Just my opinion but ISU needs to recruit more and try to get to the 35K or more number consistently. 35K should be ISU's floor.

The issue is every college is trying to recruit more. One issue Iowa has is too many colleges/Universities. We don't need 30 in a State this size but here we are.

Colleges/Universities in the east and midwest are all having the same issues. There are too many colleges and not enough students. The population growth in the US is southwest where there are fewer colleges/universities. ISU just hired a regional admissions rep for the southwest in addition to others they have in the south. Unfortunately "recruit more" is really damned hard and requires significant financial support.

 

[NorthCyd]

Dang I don’t know if campus can sustain that number. tOSU has 50k and the campus is like 4X bigger than ISU.

What Leath did really stretched ISUs infrastructure. It wasn't sustainable at the rate they were going.

 

[Pope]

I'm not saying you're wrong, because I think you're right about demographics, but I disagree that the drop doesn't have to do with leadership. Without Leath's push to increase enrollment I don't think you would have seen such a drastic drop in enrollment and would rather have seen a flattening in enrollment. It looks more dramatic because of the policies of the previous administration along with the impacts of covid.

While Leath happily took credit for ISU's enrollment increase, he had very little to do with it. Following a few years of dramatic declines in state appropriations, the University took a much more aggressive and innovative approach to new student recruitment, particularly nonresident recruitment. But all competitive advantages have a short life, especially when your competitors also find themselves in crisis mode.

Also, there was some blowback from within regarding the University lacking the necessary infrastructure to support the dramatic increase in enrollment. These factors combined to level off ISU's enrollment increases and enrollment has been reverting to the mean ever since.

 

[NorthCyd]

While Leath happily took credit for ISU's enrollment increase, he had very little to do with it. Following a few years of dramatic declines in state appropriations, the University took a much more aggressive and innovative approach to new student recruitment, particularly nonresident recruitment. But all competitive advantages have a short life, especially when your competitors also find themselves in crisis mode.

Also, there was some blowback from within regarding the University lacking the necessary infrastructure to support the dramatic increase in enrollment. These factors combined to level off ISU's enrollment increases and enrollment has been reverting to the mean ever since.

I'll be honest I don't know how much credit Leath deserves for the enrollment push, but he certainly took all of it. I just have friends who work at ISU and the growth was causing some real problems as you point out.

 

[Cycsk]

Realize that this isn't the first time the poster has complained about Harris on here. He has in numerous other posts claimed that "Harris is ruining the UNI AD".

He just has a problem with Harris and has to post about it a lot.

There is a thread on PantherNation called "AD in disarray." Wonder if the OP is involved over there too.

 

[t-noah]

UNI's Accounting department used to be known for pumping out CPA's. The problem though was that they could do that because they were not accredited and could have CPA Review Courses as part of their Accounting courses. ISU on the other hand was accredited and thus could NOT have CPA Review Courses as part of their Accounting courses. So as an ISU student I had to pay for an outside course to take the CPA Review course and it was another 3 hour class on top of my ISU classes.

Interesting. That sounds like CPA thing, crazy rule. In my school (medical) they helped us prep for State Boards. Other schools did not do it that way. I guess it varies.

Without looking I'm going to say it spiked around 2016 due to Leaths push to increase enrollment and has dropped since then due to different leadership.

Pretty close!

https://www.ir.iastate.edu/sites/default/files/factbook/AY2021/EN01_Enrollment_Historical_Graph.pdf

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Thx!

ISU's enrollment has been on the decline too. That very much has to do with demographics and not necessarily who is leading the institution. In other words, ISU enrolls a very large percentage of Iowans and the number of traditional college age students in Iowa is decreasing. Also keep in mind the number of International students has been decreasing each year since 2016. COVID has accelerated the drop in International student enrollment.



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You too. Thx!

 

[isufbcurt]

Dang I don’t know if campus can sustain that number. tOSU has 50k and the campus is like 4X bigger than ISU.

Then build more LOL

 

[davegilbertson]

Hey All!

I don't think it's a secret that the UNI Athletic Department is in shambles right now and that it starts with AD David Harris who came from Iowa State in 2016.

My question for those of you more 'in the know' on the inner-workings at Iowa Stats is what his reputation was when he was in Ames? I know he was on the student services (non-public facing) side of things which, in itself, doesn't tend to lead toward being the public face of a department.

Any insight anyone has would be very helpful! Thanks!

FWIW I don't consider UNI a rival

 

[Dr.bannedman]

wait so you guys like the enrollment going up and the university ranking going down? no for me bro

 

[2forISU]

Iowa State's school of business is a big player here.

Very true. Weird to say, but UNI was the business school in the state for a period of time. Iowa has also committed a lot of resources to grow their business dept.

I grew up in the Waterloo/CF area and loved going to games. I would love to see UNI get back to who they were in the 90's.

 

[2forISU]

why the big drop in enrollment the last three years? Seemed somewhat flat before then.

Iowa State growth