I am delighted to kick off my fall newsletter by welcoming all members of our Peabody community back to campus for the 2024-25 Academic Year. I hope everyone had a pleasant and productive summer, and I am pleased to provide some important updates as we launch a new academic year here at Peabody.
I like to think we spend most of our time focused on excellence and meeting our mission while carrying out significant strategic advances for Peabody that build strength upon strength. At the same time, financial sustainability is essential for a promising future. And so it seems particularly important —having made an unprecedented commitment to meet full need with no loans for qualified undergraduates, and being on the cusp of a major capital improvement project (more to come on this soon) —that we take a moment to celebrate finishing this past fiscal year with a balanced budget.
Underlying the Breakthrough Plan 2024, which we are now wrapping up, has been a strong financial plan with a multi-year focus on growing enrollment through new and expanded programs, enhanced fundraising, and strategic expense management leading to the elimination of longstanding structural deficits that have ranged historically in the millions. In recent years, despite COVID interruptions, we were able to continue to reduce that operating deficit to half of previous annual deficits. Our plan had been to achieve a surplus in FY25, but thanks to improved financial performance, we will have officially concluded FY24 in the black, a year ahead of schedule.
Looking ahead, we have every reason to anticipate that our strategic investments in programming, financial aid, and capital needs, alongside careful financial planning and investment that will accompany our next strategic plan, will lead to continued stabilization and positive operating margins in the years ahead. But for the moment, we can enjoy this turning point in Peabody’s financial story.
The Conservatory has seen unprecedented enrollment growth of more than 40% over the past eight years, and this year we expect to welcome more than 825 students. Importantly, due in part to our new financial aid for undergraduates, selectivity improved this year from accepting nearly half of a highly qualified and competitive audition pool to accepting a little more than one-third of that pool. We expect that acceptance rate to continue to decline over the next few years. Similarly, we have seen our yield—the percentage of students who accept our offer of admission—increase by five percentage points and we expect that number to continue to rise. Selectivity and yield are key measures of Peabody’s competitiveness among peer institutions and these trends are indicative of our increasing appeal and brand strength.
Increasing access to a Peabody education was a central driver of our efforts to meet full need. Here too, there is positive news to report. The number of students eligible for Pell grants is projected to increase from 15% last year to 22% this year, and the percentage of FLI students (first generation in a family attending college including those with limited income), is projected to increase from 18% to 24%. In addition, this year’s entering undergraduate class is a record 25% underrepresented students, compared to 18% last year. So, with this entering undergraduate class, Peabody gets both more competitive and more socioeconomically diverse by removing prior financial barriers to access for many students.
I am also excited to reiterate that Bloomberg Philanthropies’ most recent, generous gift to Johns Hopkins University to support need-based graduate financial aid will also add to available Peabody financial aid funds in the future.
As many of you are aware, each division of the university does an external review every five years. It was Peabody’s turn last spring. A review panel comprised of three deans from peer institutions was invited by the President and Provost to evaluate Peabody via a detailed self-study, supporting documents, and a two-day visit in March 2024. The panel’s written report to the President and Provost highlighted the following conclusions.
The report noted Strengths and Achievements including Peabody’s remarkable growth, innovation, and leadership among its peers. The report also discussed Peabody’s increased enrollment, the launch of innovative curricular initiatives, reorganized leadership and faculty structures including governance, improved financial aid and compensation policies, and the hiring and retention of top faculty. It further noted that new and expanded programs in Jazz, technology-based programs like Music for New Media, the arts and health, and dance took root while core strengths in classical performance and composition were maintained. It concluded that “Peabody is extremely well run and well situated to compete and out-innovate on an increasing basis, with the finest conservatories in the world.”
Specifically commenting on Student Experience, the report emphasized our students’ general satisfaction with most student-support services, while noting student pride in Peabody’s culture of excellence and kindness. Specific mention was made of the excellent work of our Student Affairs team, and the efforts they make on a daily basis to support our students and provide care and guidance in order for them to excel and thrive. The report noted areas for future focus include facilities, academic advising, and the large ensembles experience.
Conclusions and Recommendations were summed up by the comments that Peabody is in an “enviable position of strength,” with a solid financial base, a strong faculty, and an exciting suite of programs. The school is well positioned to continue to thrive and enhance its reputation as one of the nation’s top conservatories while at the same time, Peabody should address its challenges around space and facilities and assess its overall capacity around future enrollment growth.
With near completion of the Breakthrough Plan 2024, on the heels of a successful external review, and within the context of unprecedented investments now being made in financial aid, capital initiatives, and faculty, it is time to develop a new set of strategic goals across five key areas of focus including: academic programming; financial aid as a driver of access and excellence; expanding our reach beyond the confines of the Conservatory and our campus; Peabody’s people and culture; and our vision for the Mount Vernon campus.
To accomplish this the Peabody Institute Executive Team and Senior Management Group held a facilitated planning session in June, followed by a similar session of the Peabody Institute Advisory Board, focusing on institutional strategic objectives going forward. In the weeks since these working sessions, the process to shape draft strategic goals—based on the planning sessions and building on Peabody’s Breakthrough Plan 2024—has begun. Next steps include soliciting input on preliminary draft goals from the Peabody community in early fall 2024, after which a series of goals will be finalized, and we will establish action steps to meet each goal. We expect planning to be completed by December 2024. We are excited to launch a new plan that both builds on our progress and history and looks boldly to the future.
The revitalization of Peabody’s physical spaces features prominently in our planning efforts. At this time I expect Peabody to be able to make an important announcement early this fall that will pave the way for revitalized student housing in a plan that will expand the footprint of the Peabody campus, freeing up the current student housing space for major renovation and expansion of academic programming space. We expect to be able to share details within a few short weeks. Please stay tuned!
Peabody’s trajectory of enrollment growth has been the result of both launching new programs and expanding existing core programs. The Music Engineering and Technology area has seen exponential growth through the launch of the Music for New Media program six years ago, the new Film and Game Scoring master’s degree, and expansion of the long-standing Computer Music program. In fact, students in MET programs have increased from 8% of the student cohort to nearly 20% today. And this area will soon get another boost.
In fall 2025, a new undergraduate Production program will offer new opportunities through our Recording Arts program. In addition, we are enormously excited to be launching a degree in Hip Hop studies–the first of its kind. Having recently celebrated its 50th anniversary, Hip Hop has taken its place as an essential American art form, and while missing from institutions of higher learning (much as Jazz was up until the last four or five decades), it will eventually find its way into academic studies, given its artistic and cultural importance. I am proud that Peabody will again be at the forefront with this initiative, and I look forward to sharing more about both these programs in the coming months.
It would not be a new academic year without exciting new faculty arriving at Peabody. This year we are joined by six new full-time faculty members including Rachel Brashier, Associate Professor and Chair of Music Education; Richard Drehoff, Assistant Professor in Ear Training; Annie Fullard, Professor and Director of Chamber Music; Emily Milius, Assistant Professor in Music Theory; Ian Rosenbaum, Associate Professor of Percussion; Darin Atwater, Distinguished Visiting Professor, who will continue working with our faculty on expanding the range and diversity of music being studied and performed at Peabody, while building out new offerings in Gospel music; and Boris Slutsky returns to Peabody as Distinguished Professor of Piano. We are delighted to welcome these very accomplished artists to Peabody.
As always, there is much happening at Peabody and so much that will happen this year. I look forward to future opportunities to share more exciting news going forward. For now, best wishes on the start of a new academic year!