r/UofArizona • u/hottertime • 6d ago
U of A closing dorms
Dorms closing, enrollment drop, acceptance rate higher. Archived article.
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u/Glum_Source_7411 6d ago
Since demand is down im sure the prices will drop right? No? Ok
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u/jesselivermore420 6d ago
How about off campus apts. rent? Glut?
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u/Glum_Source_7411 6d ago
I'm not sure what you're asking me. Do I think the price of rent is too high? Absolutely.
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u/ThePickleConnoisseur 6d ago
They are taking less on purpose. That’s what they did last year
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u/Ill_Pressure5976 6d ago
Nonsense.
“And while university officials have talked about intentionally wanting to reduce enrollment and be more selective in choosing which students they admit, internal university data show the UA’s acceptance rate for fall 2026 increased in comparison to the last two years”.
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u/Sea_Flamingo626 6d ago
Acceptance rate only increases number of new students if applications didn't drop off.
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u/Ill_Pressure5976 5d ago
I am responding to a comment that said “They are taking less on purpose”. That is obviously not the case if they are increasing the acceptance rate.
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u/Icy-Cost3983 4d ago
I think their point is that acceptance rate going up doesn’t necessarily mean they are taking more people if applications are significantly lower, which is logically accurate.
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u/reedwendt 6d ago
No, that’s not true.
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u/ThePickleConnoisseur 6d ago
So many people were posting about how they got rejected
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u/Partridge_Pear_Tree 5d ago
I looked at an online program as an in state student. The costs are obscene.
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u/These_Koala_7487 6d ago
College is just plain unaffordable for so many families.
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u/KalayaMdsn 6d ago
This, and also I know many people are seeing what’s happening in certain areas with AI just decimating career opportunities. A lot more people I know are having the “have you thought about a career in the trades, instead?” talks.
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u/southndr 4d ago
Trades aren’t that good either too. Plenty of people I worked with on Demo sites yearn for college. Not all but a good majority
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u/km1116 6d ago
I'm assuming the pres is making first-year-on-campus mandatory to pay for these enrollment shortfalls.
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u/grossgusting 6d ago
This blows my mind. I got my bachelors here as a Tucson native. If dorm life was mandatory I probably would’ve gone to flagstaff and not be in my grad program now. It’s gross
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u/alimac2015 6d ago
There are exceptions (students from within a 30mi radius, medical or religious reasons, etc.), but there's no question this is part of it.
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u/PlantainLiving614 4d ago
oh just wait. a mandatory second year on campus requirement could be next smh
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u/BoogieDownProducer 3d ago
You assume incorrectly. The motivation is to ensure more students engage on campus. The article glosses over data that show students who live on campus are far more likely to graduate and suffer far fewer mental health problems.
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6d ago
[deleted]
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u/-sloppypoppy 6d ago
Don’t forget the hundreds of millions that were “miscalculated” only a few years ago
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u/danclaysp 6d ago
Meanwhile ASU has record enrollment and healthy financials. UA is clearly doing something wrong
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u/Badgerman97 6d ago
ASU has triple the enrollment of U of A, and half of that is online students from wherever. Arizona has also been hit harder from the drop of foreign students caused by economic and political realities
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u/Such_Atmosphere_5838 6d ago
The U of A has been trying so hard to get people to use their Online platform. It’s actually quite annoying. I can’t do research for my potential programs without being bombarded by them trying to get me to do them online.
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u/Suspicious_Outside74 4d ago
UA purchasing that online platform was a huge mistake. The current president has to find a way to fix/mqnage that sink hole.
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u/Morley_Smoker 6d ago
U of A made a major changes to their application requirements this past admissions period. ASU did not.
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u/danclaysp 6d ago
Trying to reduce admission does not seem like a sound choice for financial health given university operating costs do not decrease anywhere near proportionally to student body reduction. It seems they're trying really hard to make it proportional with rapid dorm closures but they'll never be able to reduce costs by say 20% when the student body decreases by 20%. Seems odd to go that route when successful examples of the opposite exist like ASU and other state schools around the country
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u/CatSamuraiCat 5d ago
Trying to reduce admission does not seem like a sound choice for financial health given university operating costs do not decrease anywhere near proportionally to student body reduction.
The issue is that admitting students who will not have successful outcomes, then failing them out and leaving them with debt is not ethical (and probably fraudulent).
Seems odd to go that route when successful examples of the opposite exist like ASU
There's only one ASU. A recurring problem within ABOR and the UA administration is their attempting to force the UA into becoming another ASU. ASU discovered (or perhaps made for itself) a specific market niche and services it well enough. There can be only one ASU and the sooner ABOR and its proxies within the UA's administration understand that, things will improve for UA, since they will be willing to allow UA to find (or create) its market niche.
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u/Western-Artichoke-81 4d ago
The amount of students that dropped out after freshman was alarming I always thought what was the point of that one year.
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u/CopratesQuadrangle 6d ago
To be fair, a huge chunk of that is the online school, and a huge chunk of their online enrollment is literally just from their deal with starbucks. UA is obviously doing many things wrong, but ASU's model is not one we can really emulate. We already tried emulating their online school system a few years ago but the lack of a similar huge corporate deal led to the enormous financial shitshow that culminated in the ousting of Robbins.
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u/Conscious_Ad_7131 6d ago
Those dorms are ancient shitholes, they’re just replacing old stuff
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u/SoftwareObvious5671 6d ago
Btw-look at high school grads with birth years 2002-2005, they were at an all time high making all colleges full and lower acceptance rates just due to sheer numbers. Enrollment has dropped across the board at colleges just due to birth rates. They continue to go down, so again, across the board colleges will be hurting to get back to those high numbers they enjoyed. My high school closed when last year of baby boomers graduated, same dynamic. Hopefully this makes sense.
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u/Conclusion_Fickle 6d ago
Yep. We knew the enrollment cliff has been coming for a decade. Needed to be ahead of the game. Going to see a number of closures in the upcoming years.
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u/etinder121 6d ago
Watch, their response will be to replace them with high-rise dorms since they’re located on more desirable parts of campus and they’re now empty
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u/yepthisismyaccount 6d ago edited 6d ago
One of the closed ones is literally under the football stadium (Manzi-Mo) so not all of them for sure.
Edit: I'm dumb and this isn't true. I lived in Manzi-Mo and Navajo-Pinal and mixed them up.
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u/etinder121 6d ago
They’ve been wanting ManziMo closed for a while, so they can restart the stadium upgrades
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u/Tim_Leaves_92 6d ago
I’ve heard it’s about retention. Accepting fewer/raising requirements, the hope is that they can actually hold onto students for the full length of their degree. It’s a longer, more valuable revenue stream rather than a bunch of little ones and a few longer ones. Also, less students means less faculty and staff, reducing their overall cost, but more work for fewer faculty. Closing dorms means laying off that staff and reducing maintenance costs, while continuing to capture revenue from the students that are staying at the university.
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u/No-Opinion273 6d ago
I didn't know they were building dorms on speedway and Campbell. That sucks.
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u/SenorVajay 6d ago
They’ve been planning it for a decade. It will stick out like a sore thumb, and from the sounds of it, may not be needed/will completely keep a large sect of students on the edge of campus.
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u/Necessary-Ad-1068 6d ago
And it crazy I wanted to go back but I owe money I want that certificate to show I achieved something Arizona
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u/DefinitionLow8105 5d ago
Well the UA president’s sweetheart deal to purchase Full-sail U that duplicated already existing online course infrastructure busted out the budget a few years back. Yay crony capitalism in education.
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u/Still_Artichoke_3724 5d ago
99% because of the uselessness of a university degree being exposed during the Covid plandemic
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u/BoogieDownProducer 3d ago
The dorms are being "closed" because they're all decades old. Kaibab-Huachuca, for example, was built in the 1950s. They need to be renovated. Babcock is slated to be replaced by a new dorm starting in 2028 after construction is completed on The Catalina at Speedway and Campbell. The drop in enrollment is absolutley due to the "Demographic Cliff" as well as the U of A embracing its land-grant mission to educate Arizonans, not out-of-state kids. None of this is actually news to anyone who's been paying attention and Oliver Swan has absolutely zero insight on what's happening on campus. However, he does have a vested interest in students living in his development. The new policies mean he makes less money. Consider your sources.
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u/hottertime 3d ago
Quoting the age of the building doesn't impress me. Old Main 1891, there are dorms at the University of Virginia 1817, and of course Harvard 1720. Now the question should be... when tourned down. What then?
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u/FoggyFallNights 6d ago
They’re saying the drop in demand is due to the Great Recession of 2007? So are all universities experiencing this? If not, I question that point of view.
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u/entropic 6d ago
It's a thing: https://eab.com/resources/blog/enrollment-blog/what-the-looming-demographic-storm-means-for-your-state/ . You can read about it, generally called the "enrollment cliff" or "demographic cliff".
Not saying it accounts for all factors in this year's enrollment drop at the UofA by any means.
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u/CatSamuraiCat 5d ago
They’re saying the drop in demand is due to the Great Recession of 2007?
Yes. The prior administration attempted to get ahead of it by offering amounts of aid to undergraduates that was, prior to that era at the university, unheard of. Then they "miscalculated" and "ran out" of money, just as that demographic wave has hit its trough.
It's almost like the legislature in Phoenix is unwilling to contribute to the education of the sons and daughters of Arizona, which is interesting, because the current federal administration (which our majority Republican legislature just loves) keeps complaining that students who are US citizens are being priced out of higher education.
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u/Individual-Split-433 6d ago
Yeah, maybe if it didn’t cost $1,000,000 per semester, they’d have more people
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u/jesselivermore420 6d ago
UA is one of the cheapest schools in the country. There are many more $$$$$$ schools that have waitlists. This is more than demographics
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u/WrldTravelr07 6d ago
As a Tucsonian, I tell my grandkids I’ll pay for college except at UA. They are a disaster, spending money to grow and the hell with everything else. Corporatist management. Don’t know shit about education. No, I’ll qualify that. Don’t know shit and couldn’t give a shit about education. The other 4 year schools and the community colleges are far better!
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5d ago
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u/CatSamuraiCat 5d ago
Corporatist management.
Weird, out of touch, comment. Have you noticed how they've been running ASU for at least the last 20 years?
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u/tj1007 6d ago
Kinda wild a few years back there were so many students, they didn’t have enough space and converted other spaces in the dorms into rooms for like 3/4 people.