Executive Summary / Study of Academic Space

Executive Summary / Study of Academic Space
Ramapo College of New Jersey / September 23, 2003

At the request of the Board's Capital Improvements Committee,
President Smith directed the Office of the Provost to study the need
for academic space at the college. A research committee was chaired by
Martha Ecker and Babs Varano, under the direction of Sandy Pfeiffer.
Data on current use were gathered and analyzed both by the Office of
Institutional Research and by the consulting firm of MGT of America
(MGT). Findings based on our current enrollment clearly support the
need for additional academic space. Projected enrollments over the next
decade make the need even more apparent.

According to MGT, regional norms indicate that a standard of 30
instructional hours per classroom per week is appropriate for Ramapo
College. We currently schedule an average of 34.53 hours and thus
exceed the accepted standard by 15%. This standard provided by MGT
assumes some time must be devoted to maintenance and periodic non-
instructional use of classrooms. Also, note that such a generalized
standard minimizes the relevance of inconsistently scheduled classes,
an issue at most colleges and universities. As well, our Office of
Institutional Research considered the usage rate if courses were
equally distributed over all time slots, in which case our rate would
still be higher than the recommended standard.

MGT also examined classroom "station use" rate, defined as the
percentage of total seats occupied by students for each room. The rate
at Ramapo is 72%, whereas the regional standard is 67%. This estimate
is conservative since we are simply counting the number of physical
seats, not the established curricular cap on seats. Had MGT taken Chat
enrollment cap into account, the current utilization rate would have
been even higher. In response to the obvious question of why we do not
schedule every available seat, note that a main recruitment tool at
Ramapo has been the relatively small size of our classes.

Enrollment headcount over the next decade is expected to
increase about 17%--or 933 FTE (21.3%). This increase, coupled with the
need for more offices for full-time and part-time faculty, underscores
the profound need for additional academic space at Ramapo College of
New Jersey.