- On EdTech Newsletter
- Posts
- A View Into Regional Public Universities
A View Into Regional Public Universities
Initial enrollment trends separating RPUs from other Public 4-years (primarily flagships and land grant universities)
Phil Hill
February 25, 2025
Was this forwarded to you by a friend? Sign up, and get your own copy of the news that matters sent to your inbox every week. Sign up for the On EdTech newsletter. Interested in additional analysis? Try with our 30-day free trial and Upgrade to the On EdTech+ newsletter.
Thanks to a LinkedIn f and its comment thread, I looked at data from the Alliance for Research on Regional Colleges (ARRC), a center at Appalachian State University. People talk about Regional Public Universities (RPUs), but ARRC seems to be the first group to define and lists these institutions. What this does is help with insight on RPUs compared to non-RPU Public 4-year institutions (primarily flagship and land grant universities. The full ARRC report is interesting, as is Jeff Selingo’s look at online education potential at RPUs.
What the researchers at ARRC did was a cluster analysis on IPEDS data for Public 4-year institutions, and they found two clusters - RPUs and non-RPUs. This method attempted to find institutions with similar missions, profiles, etc. The December 2022 report highlights some key differences.
Across revenue sources, RPUs have fewer resources with which to educate their students and serve their regions. On average, RPUs receive $1,091 less per FTE enrollment in state appropriations than non-RPUs, yet state appropriations represent a larger proportion of the RPU budget. On average, RPUs. The average RPU receives $9 million from the federal government in grants and contracts as compared with the $208 million that the federal government gives non-RPUs. RPUs also have fewer endowment assets than non-RPUs; on average, RPUs have $28,968 less per FTE in endowment assets than non-RPUs. As a result of these funding disparities, RPUs have, on average, fewer tenured faculty, full-time instructional, research, and public service staff per FTE than non-RPUs.
RPUs tend to be more affordable than non-RPUs; the average annual tuition and fees for RPUs is $8,896 as compared with $12,325 for non-RPUs.
My initial contribution was to take the ARRC data list and match it to our IPEDS enrollment analysis. For the first pass, I captured roughly 90% of the schools listed by ARRC. I have asked the research group for additional data to improve this to all schools listed. But for now, the data is stark.
