Ray Rice: UMPI Could More Than Double in Five Years

[Jonathan Whatley]

The University of Maine System Board of Trustees met this week in Presque Isle. From the UMS' blog post:

UMPI President Ray Rice announced that the rural public university’s enrollment had increased 67% over the past five years to 1,509 students, and is up nearly 20% just from last fall.

That growth has been largely driven by UMPI’s YourPace online competency-based degrees […]

In Fall of 2019, distance education made up less than one-third of the credit hours delivered by UMPI. Thanks to the popularity of YourPace programming, three-quarters of credit hours are delivered to students accessing courses away from the Presque Isle campus. Overall, distance education now makes up 37% of all credit hours delivered by UMS this semester, compared to 23% prior to the pandemic.

President Rice projects UMPI could more than double the number of credit hours it delivers over the next five years, potentially making it one of the largest universities in the System in terms of credit hour generation.

Growth in online degree programs stabilizes University of Maine System enrollment (University of Maine System, November 6 2023)

[Jarnaginra]

Great article! The enrollment report attached to it has some great excel tables. Interesting to note that UMPI was the only campus to see positive growth in headcount!

[Vle045]

I wonder how much of that is due to this forum.

[Lady_Gumshoe]

I wonder how much of that is due to this forum.

No doubt it is a LOT! However, I initially discovered UMPI via YouTube and the College Hacked channel created by an UMPI professor.

[bjcheung77]

I wonder how much of that is due to this forum.

No doubt it is a LOT! However, I initially discovered UMPI via YouTube and the College Hacked channel created by an UMPI professor.

That's interesting... College Hacked is actually a fellow TESU grad, he's also on this forum. Most of the YouTuber's and other online blog/vlogs/sites get their info from this and the sister board. He most likely applied to UMPI after hearing all the big hype from the people who have finished their degrees at UMPI in a few months...

[ashkir]

I believe it. However they really need to get more professors to grade papers faster! People are now waiting weeks.

UMPI is a great school.

[ss20ts]

I wonder how much of that is due to this forum.

A lot! There's tons of students at UMPI because of us. There's a lot on social media about the school now because of us.

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That's interesting... College Hacked is actually a fellow TESU grad, he's also on this forum.  Most of the YouTuber's and other online blog/vlogs/sites get their info from this and the sister board.  He most likely applied to UMPI after hearing all the big hype from the people who have finished their degrees at UMPI in a few months...

No he did not apply to UMPI. He was hired to become a professor when UMPI was originally moving to Brightspace. They've since parted ways. It's pretty unethical to charge people $$$ to help them complete a degree at the university you teach at. He also has a ton of also info in his videos. Take what he says with a grain of salt as he's never been an UMPI student.

[ashkir]

I'm pretty confident in what ss20ts said. If it wasn't for ss20ts going through UMPI for the first time and me following her, we'd likely have seen a far different outcome. After our initial news of our experience there others tried and it spiraled from there. I don't think they realize how big DegreeForum has been to their growth.

[bjcheung77]

I'm pretty sure he applied for a position at UMPI and not randomly cherry picked from LinkedIn or ZipRecruiter for a position (which may be another way he got the position)... If he didn't continue with UMPI, there may have been the conflict of interest as mentioned earlier. I don't know what really happened, but that's how I thought it went... I agree, I believe the big drivers are the forums and reddit or other review sites combined...

[SophiaPrincess]

I never heard of UMPI, or a number of other transfer friendly colleges, before visiting this forum.