BY: ELIZABETH KAMROWSKI, NEWS EDITOR
This year’s incoming class of 591 students is one of the largest in decades, and along with that comes student complaints about longer lines at the Hickey Dining Hall, reduced options in the Rathskeller and crowded dorm rooms including triples. For professors, the concern is about the quality of education.
The size of incoming classes have been trending upward since 2020’s class of 522, according to the university’s 2023 factbook.
As 397 seniors graduated last year, this class brings a net gain of about 200 students to Bonaventure’s campus.
This is one of the biggest classes in the past 20 to 30 years, said David Hilmey, provost and vice president of Academic Affairs.
“This is a trend we have seen over three years,” said Hilmey.
Due to the influx of students, the university increased class sizes for general education classes.
“We used to run [gen eds] at 25, and we had to move them up to 30,” said Hilmey. “We realize that there is going to come a point where we have to add more sections.”
Bonaventure is in a good place with staffing, but it’s tight, said Hilmey.
“When you only have so many people to go around, you don’t have capacity to grow,” said Hilmey. “We’re going to have to think about ‘Where can we grow.’”
Increasing class sizes for this year was met with some disappointment from faculty, according to Hilmey.
“They are concerned about the quality of the education they can provide,” said Hilmey.
Hilmey said faculty want to make sure they are still able to do deep analysis and group discussion even though their classes are larger.
“Especially if they have to teach three or four of their classes, that’s another 20 students they are going to have to teach,” said Hilmey.
For this academic year, there was no need to increase the number of class sections, with the exception of Bona-101.
“This year I would say we haven’t [increased sections] because we are pretty similar to what we were doing last year,” said Hilmey.
Additional residential spaces were added to accommodate students, according to Tom Missel, chief communications officer.
“We recognized early in the spring semester that enrollment for fall 2024 was continuing to trend upward so we made plans to add additional residential space to accommodate more students,” said Missel.
These new spaces replaced on-campus offices.
“New residential spaces were created on the first floor of Robinson Hall where the Office of Safety and Security was located; they moved to the old Human Resources office space in Doyle,” said Missel. “Human Resources relocated to the basement level of the Administration Building.”
Triple-style rooms have been assigned in Doyle and Devereux halls.
“Devereux Hall has several rooms that have always been triple rooms but have been used as doubles in recent years when occupancy was low,” said Ursula Herz, director of Residence Life in an April 2024 article. “With fuller class sizes returning, those triple rooms will be assigned as triples once again.”
Facilities purchased special furniture to be used.
“The beds have the option to be lofted so a desk can go under, two dresser units for each occupant that are two drawers each but can be stacked or left apart to slide under the beds,” said Herz in the article.
Along with increased class sizes comes increased revenue.
The university’s non-profit tax filings show revenue from tuition increasing every year in the past three publicly available reporting cycles, according to the records on GuideStar.
Gross tuition revenue at Bonaventure rose from $71.6 million in the 2020 academic year, to $77.5 million in 2022 to $83.7 million in 2023.
After scholarships are factored in, the net revenue from tuition rose from $34 million in 2020, to $36.6 million in 2022 to $39.2 million in 2023. There are no figures available for 2021.
Bonaventure needs to prepare for the trend of large classes to continue, said Hilmey.
“If next year we have another large class, we will have four large classes all here — all at the same time,” said Hilmey. “It does bring some issues that we’re going to have to deal with.
Some of these issues include ensuring there are enough classes, that the quality of education is not diminished and ensuring everyone has a place to live, said Hilmey.
“We want to balance that and make sure we have good, healthy enrollments and we’re a sustainable institution but we still stick true to what we do at Bonaventure,” said Hilmey.
Hilmey sees these large classes as a positive.
“We always get excited about large classes,” said Hilmey. “We feel good about the health of St. Bonaventure, students want to be here.”
kamrowes23@bonaventure.edu
