Diverging Fortunes in Public 4-year Institutions

Regional Public Universities deserve more attention for their mission, but the trends aren't looking good

Author

Phil Hill
March 18, 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.

Last week Third Way published an article in collaboration with the Alliance for Research on Regional Colleges (ARRC), a center at Appalachian State University, about Regional Public Universities (RPUs). The article pointed out that there is no official designation for these institutions despite their important role.

What do Western Carolina University in North Carolina and Portland State University in Oregon have in common, other than that you may not have heard of them? Both are regional public universities (RPUs), a group of regionally-focused colleges and universities that educate 70% of all students (nearly seven million annually) attending four-year public institutions in the United States each year. With missions to foster postsecondary access, regional well-being, and student-centeredness, the 474 RPUs provide incredible value and return on investment (ROI) for their students and serve as anchors for their communities. These institutions enroll the students who make up the “new majority” of Americans—including students who are the first in their families to attend college, students of color, rural students, adult learners, and veterans—while keeping costs low and barriers to entry reasonable.

In IPEDS data, RPUs get lumped in with flagship and land grant universities, which have dramatically different characteristics despite all being Public 4-year institutions. UNC Chapel Hill (flagship, fabulously lucky to have made the dance) and NC State (land grant) are non-RPUs, while Appalachian State U, East Carolina U, and NC A&T State U serve as RPUs. But with no designation, there is little comparison available in aggregate.

And if you look at the trend data, there is a very obvious divergence in fortunes that has been hidden in most reporting.

ARRC Report

That’s where ARRC comes in. In late 2022 that group published a report that analyzed mission statements and performed cluster analysis on 74 variables to identify RPUs. The data are not perfect, as noted in the original report.

While our approach was rigorous, it includes a few cautions and limitations. First, we excluded some public colleges from our analysis. Pennsylvania State University branch campuses report data to the flagship, making institutional-level analyses via cluster analysis impossible; as such, we removed these campuses. We would have preferred to include these campuses because other scholars have identified them as RPUs, and their stated missions indicate a commitment to fostering postsecondary access and regional wellbeing – traits that research demonstrates RPUs exhibit. A few campuses had a high degree of data missingness which also made cluster analysis impossible.

Military academies and global campuses were also excluded. Nevertheless, the ARRC data are valuable in terms of allowing some more in-depth analysis as was done in the original report and the Third Way post.

The affordability of RPUs is a major draw for students—and for good reason. Thirty-eight percent of RPU students are eligible for Pell Grants, and these institutions continually serve their students well. RPUs generate greater upward mobility for Americans than any other type of college or university. RPUs also deliver strong returns after graduation. In Third Way’s Economic Mobility Index, 76% of the public institutions in the top tier of colleges and universities generating mobility are RPUs. When comparing cost of attendance to post-graduate earnings, four out of the top 10 institutions on Third Way’s Price-to-Earnings Premium are RPUs. For the everyday American, RPUs are where access and affordability meet, allowing students to pursue quality higher education that leads to economic and job security.

Adding Trend Data

What appears to be missing from this analysis is trend data - for example, how are enrollments changing over time for RPUs compared to non-RPUs (primarily flagships and land grant institutions). To get this view, I matched the ARRC data list of institutions into our IPEDS data model. And what emerges is a remarkable divergence in fortunes.

As we have long reported, the public 4-year sector (removing community colleges that have a handful of bachelor degrees but are primarily awarding 2-year degrees and certificates) appears to be fairly stable since at least 2012. 1.8% higher enrollments in Fall 2023 than in Fall 2012.

Clearly for-profit 4-years and public 2-years (i.e., mostly community colleges) are the ones that have really declined.

But thanks to the ARRC data, I can now separate out RPUs from non-RPUs. RPUs have declined 6.7% in enrollments since 2012 while non-RPUs have actually increased enrollments by 18.6%. Put another way, non-RPUs have fared better in enrollments - by far - than any other adjusted sector.

Note: The following two charts are just for public 4-year institutions that have been classified as RPU or non-RPU in the ARRC report.

There was a big change starting in 2017, where non-RPUs continued to grow while RPUs started a significant decline. There was an increase from Fall 2022 to 2023, which I suspect might persist for another year or so, but then the enrollment decline (formerly known as cliff) begins in earnest.

Online Education

It turns out that there is also a significant difference in how aggressive RPUs have been with fully-online graduate degrees.

For undergraduates (bottom of chart), both RPUs and non-RPUs have similar ratios of students in fully-online programs. But for graduate programs, RPUs far exceed non-RPUs in terms of the percentage of students in fully-online programs. And that, by the way, is interesting. As Jeff Selingo recently noted, RPUs historically have been very place-based - institutions designed for their regions. Yet RPUs have already been developing fully-online grad programs much faster than non-RPUs (44% vs, 27% in 2023).

Kudos to ARRC and Third Way for extending and publicizing this research, and we need more analysis on RPUs.

The main On EdTech newsletter is free to share in part or in whole. All we ask is attribution.

Thanks for being a subscriber.