The UA faces wide-ranging challenges in determining how its student body should look as it assumes more control over which applicants it may admit and reject, a top UA official in charge of overseeing enrollment told the Faculty Senate yesterday.

The challenges relate to shaping a student body that meets the university's ideals, then recruiting and retaining the students it wants most, said Patti Ota, vice president for enrollment management.

Determining how to do so involves figuring out the ideal proportions of undergraduate and graduate students, freshmen and transfer students, residents and non-residents, and other demographic breakdowns.

"What do we want (those numbers) to be in terms of the culture of this institution?" she asked.

Ota hopes to be able to answer some of those questions later this year, and individual colleges will eventually be asked to work with university administrators to determine their own ideal demographics.

Beginning in 2006, the UA will begin to be able to apply those ideals when the Arizona Board of Regents loosens constraints that now require the university to admit most of its students automatically, based on their GPAs or SAT scores.

With freedom to accept and decline a wider range of students, the UA will be able to shape a student body that fits with the university's mission, while automatically accepting fewer students who meet minimum GPA and standardized test requirements.

That mission, which President Peter Likins has defined as Focused Excellence, involves becoming more selective while prioritizing diversity.

Likins has also said the UA can't handle a student body larger than about 40,000, as space constraints prevent the campus from continued expansion.

But as the number of Arizona high school graduates grows ÷ likely by 20 percent in less than 10 years ÷ deciding who those 40,000 students are becomes increasingly important.

For example, Ota said, the UA might consider decreasing the size of its freshman class from 6,000 to 5,000, while increasing the number of students it accepts as transfers from almost 2,000 to nearly 3,000.

It might also try to increase its graduate student enrollment, which sits now at about 22 percent of total enrollment, to somewhere closer to the national average of 30 percent.

Whether the university implements such policies depends on how community members define the ideal culture of the institution.

The UA's racial makeup will also play a critical role in shaping its enrollment, as the university slowly seeks to increase its Hispanic enrollment to 25 percent of its student body.

Targeting the students who fit the UA's ideal profile means spending more money on recruitment, Ota said, adding that the $229 the UA spends on recruiting per student falls below the 25th percentile for public universities.

Some of that additional money could come from implementing a $25 application fee for residents, which could net the UA between $200,000 and $250,000. She is also asking the university for more money to spend on recruiting.

Once students enroll, the challenge becomes making sure they don't leave, Ota said. Now, about 22 percent of UA students leave after their first year, and only 55 percent graduate.

Both numbers are widely recognized as low, and Likins has gone as far as to call the graduation rate an "embarrassment" compared with other universities.

Retaining students means improving advising, eliminating barriers that make university life difficult and ensuring that students are pushed toward success, Ota said.

"We can't let size be an excuse for not giving each student the attention he or she deserves in terms of paths to success," she said.

Faculty Sen. Douglas Jones asked Ota whether the wider university community would be asked to help answer the questions she put forth.

"In as many ways as possible is the simple answer," she said.

Ota took on the new position of enrollment management vice president after an administrative reorganization over the summer. Likins appointed her to the new post to develop plans for managing enrollment in response to the regents' decision to offer universities more control over admissions.