Dear Colleagues,
Here’s hoping you enjoyed a pleasant summer! It’s great to see our campuses buzzing again, and there’s even more buzz than usual: this fall George Mason University became the first public four-year university in the history of the Commonwealth of Virginia to welcome more than 40,000 students.
Although this is just a few hundred more students than we welcomed last year, the significance of this milestone cannot be overstated. This fall, college enrollment continues to be down overall in Virginia and nationwide, and the country is in the throes of debates over whom universities should admit, how much they should charge, and what sort of relevance a college degree holds in today’s society. Through it all, George Mason continues to attract more students to our campuses, a testament to the community to which we all proudly belong.
As we reflect on this milestone, it is also fair to ask how big we should be – after all, no student wants to get lost in a sea of students. And ours will not. Our student-to-faculty ratio remains at 16:1, and we continue to offer a robust set of programs and services to support success.
And, most important, our academic success metrics continue to improve.
New students for the fall of 2023 comprise our largest (more than 4,500) and most diverse freshman class in Mason history – and our most academically impressive class: 28% enter with a 4.0 grade-point average or higher, 51% have a GPA of 3.75 or higher, and 71% have a GPA of 3.5 or higher.
Together, we are managing the balance of access and excellence in a way that allows us to continue to grow in spite of downward state and national trends:
- Initiatives such as the Mason Virginia Promise and the Early Identification Program create college pathways and illustrate our inclusiveness.
- Mason provides the second-highest economic mobility among Virginia institutions. Our Class of 2022 survey respondents reported a median salary of $72,000, and 87% of them reported advancing their careers within six months of graduating. In general, our graduates experience student loan defaults at about one-third the national rate.
- We put students first. TimelyCare, free 24/7 virtual mental health support for students, since October 2022 has served 935 unique students who made 4,242 visits. We’ve also added five clinical positions to Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) in the past three years. This academic year we will launch a practice-based digital learning platform to improve student mental health and well-being.
- As noted in an email you received from HR on June 8, the university issued salary increases this summer.
- Mason’s research expenditures have grown by 54% in the past five years, driving discovery and the creation of new knowledge.
As the nation grapples with a succession of landmark U.S. Supreme Court decisions, and during a time of significant and sustained political changes, we should all be proud of how the Mason community lives our values to put students first and sticks to our core motto: freedom and learning.
We at Mason demonstrated that honoring freedom of thought and expression is paramount, even when we are tested. Especially when we are tested. That’s a hallmark of a broadly inclusive university and, frankly, one of the fundamental reasons we exist.
There is no predicting what the story of this year will be. But we start in the best of places: welcoming a record number of students, who come to us in unprecedented diversity, with unprecedented academic credentials, ready to transform their lives and by extension the world to come.
They challenge us all to do our best.
Let’s get to work, Patriots!
Gregory Washington
President