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April 15, 2024
Dear William Paterson Faculty and Staff,
This past Saturday, Undergraduate Admissions hosted a very successful ‘Will. Power. Day for Accepted Students’, welcoming 442 students and their families to campus, a 27% increase over last year's event. Thanks to Vice President George Kacenga, Associate Vice President Steve Quinn and the entire team, including Assistant Director of Event Management Justin Pannullo, our wonderful student ambassadors, and all of the faculty and staff who helped host this important event, showing our guests all that is special about William Paterson.
As of Friday, first-time student applications are up 14.8% over this time last year and first-time student acceptances are up 12.7%. Deposits are leveling out with last year at a 0.6% increase, with an expectation that we may fall behind last year’s trend line due to the extension to June 1 of the priority deposit deadline, which is a result of the U.S. Department of Education’s FAFSA processing delays and which will allow financial aid packaging to get underway for new students. First-time student deposit comparisons will be more analogous after June 1. International applications are up, undergraduate by 36.6%, and graduate by 77.2%. Overall, new student applications for fall 2024 are up 14.4% and acceptances are up 14.3%.
While our fulltime, main campus population remains the primary lever with which to strengthen our financial position, it also important that we continue advocating in Trenton for the maintenance of Outcomes Based Allocation funds and the additional $7.5 million in State support that we received for the current budget year. So, I am grateful to President Sue Tardi and the statewide AFT leadership for their continued work on this front. I will keep the campus community informed as the State budget process enters a critical period in the coming weeks and months.
On a different note, union leadership asked me to follow up on the discussion at the Faculty Senate Meeting last week, where questions were asked about our contract and revenue share with Academic Partnerships (AP), marketing and recruitment partner for WP Online. William Paterson is completing the first year of a three-year contract renewal with AP that goes through July 13, 2026. AP’s work has been instrumental in growing our graduate and adult enrollment, thanks in large part to their marketing expertise and significant advertising spending, which gives us high visibility in the most expensive and competitive media market in America.
Our more favorable terms as part of the new agreement bring roughly 60% of tuition revenue, and 100% of fee revenue to William Paterson. However, not every program has the same revenue split with AP, varying based on when we entered the market. New programs in the online market require more marketing dollars to generate enrollment and create brand awareness, hence we have a slightly lower split on those programs as opposed to those which have been operating online longer. For transparency and comparison, the current AP Revenue Percentages for certain Online Programs are as follows:
- AP receives forty percent (40%) for all Graduate Business and all Healthcare Programs (including Graduate, MPH and RN to BSN); these are the longest programs in the online market for us;
- AP receives forty-five percent (45%) for all Undergraduate Programs, which are newer in the online space, and;
- AP receives forty-five percent (45%) for all Education Programs, which are also newer in the online space.
I hope this helps provide additional clarity on this critical partnership.
Our Diversity and Equity Campus Climate Survey will open tomorrow, April 16 and be available through May 7. I encourage all students, faculty, staff, and administrators to participate in this important survey, so please be on the lookout for the email from the Higher Education Data Sharing Consortium (HEDS). It will take you fifteen minutes or less to complete the survey. Employees without WP computers should be given access to a device, along with time during their regular work hours to take the survey. Once you have completed the survey, you'll have the opportunity to enter a drawing for one of fifteen $15 gift cards for Campus Dining or the Book Store. HEDS will ensure that all answers are anonymous before sending the results back to us. We want to hear from you and will use your responses to enhance our efforts to make our campus community even more inclusive, engaging, and supportive for all. If you have any questions about the survey, please contact Chief Diversity Officer Jeanne Arnold.
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