MIT Considers Increasing Undergraduate Count to 4,500 (Update1)

By John Lauerman and Janet Frankston Lorin

Nov. 5 (Bloomberg) -- The Massachusetts Institute of Technology may raise the number of undergraduate students by at least 7 percent to increase revenue, school officials said.

Administrators are discussing an increase in the undergraduate population to about 4,500, from the current level of about 4,200, Susan Hockfield, president of MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said today in a television interview at Bloomberg headquarters in New York.

MIT has cut varsity sports teams and fired staff in an effort to reduce costs after its endowment investments plunged 17 percent in the global recession. School officials are exploring whether higher enrollment would boost revenue after meeting students’ financial aid needs, said Stuart Schmill, dean of undergraduate admissions.

“We are under discussions about whether we should go back to our 4,500 student population -- undergraduate student population -- that we had about 10 years ago,” Hockfield said.

Hockfield became president of MIT in December 2004. About 11 percent of applicants were accepted to the school last year, according to admissions statistics. The number of early action applications, which are nonbinding, rose 16 percent this year, Schmill said.

The value of MIT’s endowment fell to $8 billion from $10 billion in the fiscal year that ended June 30. The school cut varsity sports programs to 33 from 41 at the end of the most recent academic year because of endowment losses.

Alumni include Lawrence H. Summers, director of U.S. President Barack Obama’s National Economic Council and the former president of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke.

To contact the reporter on this story: Janet Frankston Lorin in New York jlorin@bloomberg.net ; John Lauerman in Boston at jlauerman@bloomberg.net .

Last Updated: November 5, 2009 13:08 EST

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