University overestimates college transfers

By Staff Editorial     2/18/10 6:00pm

Though Duncan College and McMurtry College have made large strides in their paths to becoming full-fledged residential colleges, they are still facing an enormous setback: Both of the colleges still do not have enough transfer students from Baker College, Brown College, Hanszen College and Wiess College to fully subsist. To rectify this, all freshmen from these colleges have received invitations to transfer (see story, page 1). Though we are happy that Baker freshmen now have an opportunity to transfer and remain with their Duncan friends, we are disappointed that the university underestimated college loyalty when planning the transfer process. As a result, Duncan and McMurtry will face more challenges in the future: Both colleges will now have an incredibly large class of 2013, in addition to their disproportionate upperclassmen classes and larger classes in future years.

Opening two enormous colleges at the same time and then expecting to fill each bed at each college after only one year has proven, understandably, to be too daunting of a task for the administration. Fortunately, many freshman invitees have already elected to transfer. We sincerely hope this is the final step of the transfer recruitment process for the new colleges. However, if even the additional freshmen transfers do not fill all of the beds, Rice will just have to hope that there will be enough upperclassman transfers from other universities or among next year's freshmen to keep the sheets warm.

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