Remarks to the Jefferson County Legislative Delegation

For Immediate Release
Dec. 19, 2022

Birmingham-Southern has been on this hilltop since the founding of Birmingham College in 1898. Only after its merger in 1918 with Southern University, another Methodist institution founded in Greensboro in 1856, do we have Birmingham-Southern as we know it today.

Since 1918, Birmingham-Southern has had and continues to have a huge impact across our city, our county, and our state. Our campus, our real estate, our home, is the western side of Birmingham. But it is our students, who through the personalized guidance of our staff and faculty, become alumni who make all of Alabama an extension of our campus, who make Alabama a better place every day.

• Of our living alumni, 9,500 of 17,000 live in Alabama, in each of our 67 counties.
• About 60 percent of our student body comes from Alabama.
• And many of these students go on to medical school at UAB and South Alabama, law school at The University of Alabama and Cumberland, graduate programs in business and science at UAB, Auburn, and Alabama; nursing school at UAH and UAB; and engineering schools at UAB and Auburn, among other graduate programs around the state and country. In fact, 80 percent of our graduates pursue an advanced degree making them some of the most valuable employees for our state.

Our alumni who live in Alabama work to give back to our state every day in areas of business, law, medicine, science, non-profit leadership, the arts, education, politics, and last, but not least, the media. We are proud of the fact that you cannot be active in Alabama without running into Birmingham-Southern grads everywhere.

And yet, there are only 9,500 Birmingham-Southern grads out of 5 million Alabama residents. Clearly, something special has been going here in west Birmingham for more than 100 years.

As the only nationally ranked liberal arts college in Alabama – ranked #117 by U.S. News for 2022 – Birmingham-Southern is one of our state’s educational jewels. For many of us who have known this college over the last 50 years, we remember the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s, some of BSC’s most vibrant times. Unfortunately, these good times ended when the College spent a lot of its endowment and took on a significant amount of debt between 2005 and 2010. While the plan to build out a fabulous campus to attract more students was well intentioned, the execution of this plan was fraught; its timing was a disaster. Had we not undertaken this strategy, our endowment would be close $200 million. Our campus would not be quite as beautiful, but I would not be standing here before you today.

By 2012, we had no choice but to slash our costs as deeply as we could without jeopardizing the BSC educational experience. From 2012 through 2022, our annual budget has remained slightly below $45 million, a budget of the same magnitude as in 2003. The College has shown massive restraint with respect to costs and in particular to faculty and staff compensation. We cut programs that we wanted to keep. We have been frugal with capital expenditures. We have been disciplined in paying down debt, from $70 million peak down to $27 million today. Quite simply, we cannot reduce expenditure further and provide an experience that meets the expectation our state has of our graduates.

Today, we are asking for help to create a financial bridge -- enough money to fill the gap normally covered by endowment. This bridge will enable us to operate through May 2026 while we rebuild the endowment that was spent down over a decade ago.

Our $30 million ask from the state could be funded in two ways. First, the state has been awarded $1.05 billion from the American Rescue Plan Act to be allocated next year. Working directly with representatives of the state government, we believe that we qualify for $12.5 million of this allocation. The rules for its distribution are highly prescriptive on who qualifies. Given the advice we have received from the state, we believe that we do.

The second source of funds is the Education Trust Fund, which provides the financial resources for the public schools and universities in our state. In addition, it has been used to fund several private universities, research institutions, and at least one private secondary school. The state has the ability to decide where to send funds based on where they see the funds supporting a public interest.

When $15 million of last year’s ETF funds went to Hudson-Alpha Institute for Biotechnology in Huntsville, which is neither public nor an educational institution, I was happy about it. Hudson-Alpha is one of those institutions that will have positive impact on our workforce and economy for generations to come. That said, I believe our $17.5 million one-time ask compares favorably to any investment in the future of our state.

Of course, we need more than a bridge. We need to get to the other side, which is a $200 million endowment raised by private funds that can yield $10 million a year to support the College.

To date, we have $45.5 million in pledges in a quiet campaign from about 400 donors – mostly alumni, but also parents, friends, foundations, and corporate partners – toward that goal.

We believe with the time that the state funds will give us, we can gain support from the other 16,000 graduates we have not contacted as well as the many thousand people and organizations of this state who appreciate the value of this College. Our target of $200 million of pledges by May 2026 is achievable, especially with our $45.5 million head start. Such an endowment will give us the financial stability that this College needs to thrive.

Today, we are asking for help – not to save something to commemorate our past, but so we can invest in our state’s future. There is no question that Alabama will need more lawyers and doctors in the 21^st century, but there are other high-end skills that Alabama needs today from its graduates. In 2021, Birmingham and Huntsville had more than 1,100 job openings in data science. These jobs start at $65,000 a year. A data scientist with five years of experience could make well over $100,000.

This relatively new field combines computer science and mathematics. It has become an academic curriculum in the top colleges and universities around the country. Data science is now a necessary tool for almost every business and every profession.

We responded to this need by creating our accelerated data science program in summer 2021. Open to both BSC and non-BSC students, this program consists of four intensive courses in statistics, computer science, machine learning, and advanced topics in data science. The fifth course for BSC students to complete the minor is an internship at one of 18 companies in Birmingham and Huntsville.

Birmingham-Southern sees this need in the state as only growing. We have recently been approved by our accreditor to start a master’s degree in data science for fall 2023. Over the next few years, we have plans to roll out several other tech-related master’s programs to meet the immediate needs of the economy of our state.

By integrating programs such as data science into the liberal arts, we will continue to educate the young people of our state to think critically while at the same learn useful, practical skills that need to be deployed here in Alabama for our state’s future.

I’ve talked a lot about our past, our alumni and about the future students who will enroll in our master’s programs. I want to take a moment to tell you about the College today.

Our applications are up 16 percent year over year, and up 10 percent over the average of the last five years. The idea of small classes where students know their professors resonates with many high school seniors. Others appreciate the 195-acre campus that is only a mile and a half from a major urban center. Some see the College as the best route to a top graduate program. Whatever the reason, BSC continues to be in demand for thousands of young people across the state. And this demand is growing.

In a few weeks, I will teach a course in finance during our January E-Term, and will take that group of students to New York and Washington, D.C. I often eat in the college Caf. I enjoy watching our teams compete, even if it means I have to jump into a cold pool with my clothes on every year when our swimming and diving teams win conference championships. My view of our students is not exclusively from the window of the president’s office. I know many of them. I find them eager, curious, often questioning, sometimes challenging, generally delightful, and absolutely inspiring.

They come from small towns, urban neighborhoods, and suburban communities. They look like our state – 28 percent are African-American, Latino, or Asian. You may not know that 30 percent of our students identify as the first in their families to attend college. Almost half of our students play a varsity sport – often competing for conference championships while juggling a rigorous academic load and, of course, a social life that includes people who are and who are not exactly like them.

They choose Birmingham-Southern over many other options because they know we will deliver what we promise:

A stellar liberal arts education that teaches them to think critically and solve problems, prepares them not only for careers but for lives of service and impact, and gives many a chance for upward mobility.

These young people are here today to become tomorrow’s best hires, best health care providers, best teachers, lawyers, writers, performers, and leaders. They deserve my best efforts as their president, and I am proud to ask on their behalf for your best effort, too.

Daniel B. Coleman

President