Is BYU Growing or Will Grow?

[scott715]

https://www.cougarboard.com/board/messa ... d=19760808

Below is some data I collected and wrote up during last summer (some of it is not fully up to date therefore). I never got around to sharing it outside of some portions in "Friends Only" but Nat Gas Man's post and comment linked here about him hearing that BYU is planning for growth, made it seem more relevant to share now. This is a portion of a larger write up I was working on titled: "Despite "Enrollment Cap," BYU Is Growing. Can or Should it Grow by Much More Though?" and led off with:

BYU’s head football coach, Kalani Sitake,
Talked with Kalani at an event yesterday...
Trent2/8/17 9:16pm

recently told a fan (purportedly)
that he’d like to see BYU significantly increase enrollment:

"...he thinks the school needs to significantly expand the number of students. He was saying there is no reason we shouldn't be like a Big 10 school with 60,000+ students. He argued that the purchase of the old Provo High should help create the room to really increase enrollment."

BYU sports fans/alumni seem to be largely in favor of such growth as evidenced by two informal polls (here and
POLL: What would be BYU's ideal enrollment level? (assume that up to 60K+ is
BamaCoug3/7/17 8:26am

here
) where nearly 85% felt that BYU should grow to at least 40,000. While I think everyone (including Coach Sitake) realizes that increasing enrollment to 60,000+ (nearly double current enrollment) is simply impossible in the short-term, is it actually feasible as a long-range goal?

(I'll skip the sections detailing "the if/WHY" questions of BYU growing the enrollment and get to the data relevant to Nat Gas Man's comment .....

All the BYUs Are Growing

We have witnessed marked growth at BYU-Idaho from ~14,000 students in 2000 to nearly 23,000 by 2009 and well over that now. Currently, the Rexburg campus serves over 29,000 students annually, but these figures are aided by the three-track system; actual on-campus “head count” enrollment at BYU-I is currently 21,672. While on a much smaller scale, there are also plans to increase BYU-Hawaii’s enrollment by almost 20% (to 3200).

In addition to obvious and announced growth on the other BYU campuses, it appears that BYU and the Board of Trustees (BOT) have actually also been making measured moves towards growth in Provo for quite some time. The data show that both actual enrollment and building square footage are clearly on the rise at BYU.

In 1997, President Merrill Bateman announced that the BOT approved boosting enrollment by 2,000 up to 29,000 (total enrollment, including both undergraduate & graduate students) via admitting 500 more new applicants per year over a 4 year period. A long-term historical view of publically announced enrollment caps shows the following timeline:

1970 — The board establishes an enrollment cap of 25,000.
1976 — The enrollment cap is increased to 27,000.
1997 — Enrollment cap rises to 29,000.
1998 — Pres. Bateman says: “The number of full-time students on the Provo campus will remain at 29,000.”
2015 (Feb) — Elder Holland says, during a radio interview with Hugh Hewitt: “the most painful element of present life at BYU, I think, is the capping of enrollment. We just, we can’t grow.”

Looking at other historical BYU enrollment figures that I’ve gathered from various sources the undergraduate enrollment has gone from 27,460 in fall 2005 up to 30,395 at the start of this academic year. That’s an over 10% increase in just over a decade. As a side note, undergrad enrollment dipped to 26,392 in 2014 in consequence to the change in missionary ages, but has since been recovering. The most recent enrollment figures actually show that BYU is currently at it’s highest figures on record for both graduate and total enrollment at 3,052 and 33,469 respectively. The recent BYU Fall 2016 Housing report listed the enrollment figure increasing from 33,547 in Fall 2015 to 34,234 in Fall 2016. Working the numbers backwards, the total enrollment in 1997 was 27,000 and is 34,234 today. That’s nearly a 27% increase in 2 decades.

Other sources put BYU’s total enrollment at “more than 34,000”(Mormon Newsroom) in 2014 and undergraduates at 32,000 in 2013. If those sources are accurate, the estimated growth is even more than calculated above. In any event, we are dealing with enrollment numbers well above the last publically stated cap of 29,000. It’s clear that BYU’s enrollment has risen despite a lack of any announced plans to do so. Is this all that’s coming though? Elder Holland’s comment above suggests so. Also, a couple of people have informed me that, privately, the BOT is firm on an enrollment cap at about 34,000, even though nothing has been announced (that I could find) that ever officially raised the cap beyond the 1997 announced figure of 29,000.

BYU Admissions (& Apps) Are Rising

Further confirmation of these upward trends, and likely pointing toward further ongoing growth, is found by tracking total applications and admittances to BYU. A 2014 Daily Universe article stated that both applications and rejections had reached an all-time high. In 2016, BYU accepted more applicants (7,171) than any published figure I had seen before that point. But even this record was surpassed by the most recent (2017) applicant class where
This year's BYU Admittance stats
Cougarrr3/6/17 1:33pm

new records were set in the number of applicants (13,700), and acceptances (7,300)
. In contrast, there were 8,694 applicants and 6,785 acceptances back in 2005. It appears that both supply and demand for BYU enrollment are increasing.

Some will argue that increasing enrollment will significantly “dilute the product” of a highly-qualified and academically competitive student body. However, despite BYU’s modest, but notable, ongoing growth trends, this most-recent accepted class was not only the largest ever, they also set all-time records for the highest average ACT (29.5) and GPA (3.86). Increasing both the quality and quantity of an admission class is no small feat. The historical rise in average GPA and ACT scores for BYU’s acceptees has been fairly striking:

ACT (admitted new freshmen applicants):

1989: 24.7
2004: 27.4
2006: 27.8
2012: 28.4
2015: 29
2016: 29.2


This year's BYU Admittance stats
Cougarrr3/6/17 1:33pm

2017: 29.5

GPA (of enrolled new freshmen):

Fall 1998 3.72
Fall 2002 3.73
Fall 2005 3.75
Fall 2008 3.79
Fall 2013 3.82

The latest data show that the average GPA admitted freshmen to be:
2015: 3.85

This year's BYU Admittance stats
2017: 3.86

Although I don’t have the actual figures/scores that BYU Admissions is working with for their entire applicant pool, I would suppose they could potentially admit thousands of more students per year without a precipitous drop in admittance qualifications. Currently the BYU scholarship matrix shows that a newly admitted freshman with a 34 ACT and 4.0 GPA is only granted a 2 semester scholarship; 35 and 3.78 only get a half-tuition break for 2 semesters; a 32 and 3.89 gets no scholarship. BYU is obviously not hurting for strong applicants.

Land and Building Space Increasing

As noted above in Coach Sitake’s quote, in 2016 BYU acquired Provo High School (listed as a 25 acre purchase, but is closer to 27.5 acres when factoring in the seminary building and other adjacent small parcels BYU acquired) and many wonder what that land may be used for. BYU also recently purchased 81 acres around the Y mountain trail (though obviously not for building expansion purposes). In 2013 BYU notified the Riverside Country Club that they would be exercising the option to take back the land that RCC leases for a driving range (about 8 acres). That is scheduled to come back into BYU’s possession by 2028 at the latest. While not mentioning specific plans for the RCC land, it was stated:

"We don't want to give up land," said Carri Jenkins, BYU spokeswoman. "One day we'll have a use for it.”

Additionally, as that same article details, the LDS church purchased The Riviera apartment complex in 2013 (6.2 acres located very close to the football Stadium). Tallying up these acquisitions (excluding the 81 acres on Y-mountain), BYU has moved to acquire 41 usable acres in the last 5 years. This will enlarge the total campus size from 560 acres to 601; that’s just over a 7% increase.

Many local property owners are also under the impression that BYU always seems to be looking to purchase any properties that come up for sale within a block or so from campus. In 1999 BYU acquired Kent’s market when it went out of business and turned it into a satellite BYU Creamery. On an even more micro scale, BYU purchased the home in the Pleasant View neighborhood (and adjacent lot) facing the traffic intersection between LaVell Edwards Stadium and the Marriott center after it was damaged in a motor vehicle accident. It currently sits as a grass-covered vacant lot.

Tangentially related, one controversial developer, BYU Engineering graduate David Hall, who grew up in that same Pleasant View neighborhood has already purchased 20 homes there with plans to acquire more despite strong opposition from some current neighbors (Using the map features here and/or here in conjunction with Hall’s LinkedIn profile you can see the properties he’s purchased via 3 companies: Tracy Hall LLC, DRH Holdings and NewVistas Foundation.) His stated vision is to develop a higher-density planned-community that could house thousands, with a strong emphasis on communal spaces. One interesting idea is that he could potentially serve as a “stalking horse” for BYU eventually acquiring that neighborhood which is essentially already surrounded on 3+ sides by BYU campus and/or the MTC. (additionally, his companies also own many parcels/acres in south Provo near the Springville border and Hwy 89 nearby where BYU has a storage property and undeveloped lot already)

Looking at campus building construction trends, especially total square footage, can further help answer the question of whether or not BYU is growing. In 2015, there were 268 buildings accounting for 9,147,666 total square feet. Currently (2017) there are 269 buildings accounting for 9,447,820 total sq ft. Once current constructions projects are completed (2019), there will be 273 buildings and a total of 9,907,306 sq ft. That’s a net increase of 5 buildings and 759,640 sq ft (representing over 8% growth) in about a 5 year period. A web search showed BYU had 8.7 million total sq ft around 2001. That would indicate a 14% increase in square footage in just over 15 years. Also, for reference and perspective, BYU-Idaho has a current (Feb ‘17) square footage of 2.5 million, four times less than BYU. With a current enrollment of 21,672, that averages out to 115 square feet of building space to each enrollee in Rexburg. UVU is currently at 3,000,000 total square feet, with enrollment listed at 34,978 for an average of 85.7 sq ft per student (before a “build out” UVU was at 2.2M sq ft in 2011; 66.7 sq ft per student). In Provo, there will be nearly 300 square feet per enrollee (296.3 sq ft) by 2019 when current construction projects finish.

What I’ve detailed above may be all that BYU and the BOT is looking to do as far as “growth.” At one time in 1998, there was mention of a rule that BYU would only add new square footage if it is replacing old square footage:

While projects already under way eventually will add a total of 611,000 square feet of building space, BYU in the future will operate under a policy that allows new buildings only if an equivalent amount of square footage is made available by removing older buildings. That rule probably won't include a new alumni house and the indoor athletic facility, however, since those buildings would be paid for and operated with private funds and donations.

Interestingly, this quote implies that such a “square footage cap” would be due to operating costs more than anything else, since buildings that can be “paid for and operated with private funds” would be exceptions to the “rule.”

This 1999 Daily Universe article spells out the policy quite clearly:

Because BYU operates under a policy that requires it to keep a static amount of academic square footage, some campus structures would have to be demolished before the new building could be constructed.

A similar policy was apparently in place at BYU Hawaii as mentioned in this 2003 interview with President Samuelson and Shumway:

The Brethren have been very generous over the years with this campus," said President Shumway, ... "If you come in with a proposal for a new building, you must also come in with donations to build and maintain it. Right now we're still under a moratorium on academic square footage. We will have to make the case. We will also have to fully utilize what we already have," President Shumway continued, suggesting BYU-Hawaii could have access to other facilities that might eventually be built in the community.

Although, it’s been 15-20 years since those quotes, it seems that, this policy may still be in effect. The Engineering building currently under construction is listed at 200,000 sq ft and the $80 million cost was raised completely in donations prior to breaking ground last year. The new Marriott Center Annex was also completely funded through private donations as were the 100,000 square foot Museum of Art, the indoor practice facility, and the Hinckley Alumni building several years ago.

However, policies can change, and this one may be relaxing recently. Although President Shumway mentioned the moratorium in 2003 it’s clear that BYU-Hawaii has recently announced plans to increase enrollment by 20%. Notable exceptions to this “academic square footage moratorium” policy appears to be on-campus housing construction (Heritage Halls), and the Life Sciences Building completed in 2015 where there was never a mention of donations being raised (I’ve heard people say those funds likely came from the $450 million settlement BYU received from Pfizer over the Celebrex lawsuit, while another person told me that the LDS church itself put up the funds for that building). Also, it seems In any event, it seems reasonable to conclude that if BYU/BOT is paying large sums of money to acquire new land (Provo HS cost $25 million) or forego lease benefits (RCC driving range) that they would, likewise, be willing to invest in developing such properties.

-----
BamaCoug (AKA Jeff Fuller) https://twitter.com/jjfuller72
https://www.instagram.com/jjfuller72/
https://www.facebook.com/jeff.fuller.334
BYU/Big12 "expansion" saga data summarized here: http://goo.gl/1iNzCJ