Interesting Reads This Week

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This week we got our first snow on the mountains here in Utah, but I am packing up to head to warmth of MoodleMoot Global in Mexico. But what did I read?

Getting over the enrollment cliff

Dick Startz from Brookings posted an interesting piece this week titled “Are colleges really facing an enrollment cliff?” It turns out that the article’s title was misleading as the content didn’t address the supply of students—whether traditional or nontraditional—but rather on the potential impact of enrollment declines. If (unlike Phil) you can get over that poor framing, the article is worth reading for its perspectives about institutional impacts and the need to look deeper.

Many discussions about the enrollment cliff are framed around institutions being forced to close. However, Startz points out that the number of nonprofit institutions that have actually closed remains relatively small.

Most of the closures are from for-profit schools that have faced an onslaught of litigation and bad press. The closures in the nonprofit sectors have been quite modest. Further, these have tended to be small institutions whose enrollment had been declining for some time.

Instead of mass closures, Startz suggests we are more likely to see program cuts within institutions, as seen at the University of West Virginia, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and, most recently, at the University of Connecticut. At these universities, many majors are at risk of being eliminated after 70 programs were found to have fewer than 100 student completions over the past five years.

This is an interesting shift in perspective, but to me, it’s not an either/or situation—it’s a yes/and. We need to consider declining enrollments and other pressures, as well as how they are reshaping campuses beyond outright closures.

However, even though Startz is right in that closures among nonprofits have been modest thus far, they (along with mergers) are likely to become a growing feature of the higher education landscape. What has happened in the past isn’t always a reliable indicator of what will happen in the future. Many small institutions—especially private ones—are highly dependent on tuition, often located in rural areas, with limited endowments and a reliance on traditional-age students attending in person. As these institutions face mounting challenges, we are likely to see many more closures in the coming years.

Doing dual enrollment differently

Even though Utah has the youngest population in the nation based on average age, it is still facing an enrollment decline—at least in the near to medium term. This was the core message of a report released earlier this month by the Kem C. Gardner Public Policy Institute at the University of Utah. The report has been cited by the Speaker of the Utah House of Representatives as justification for a potential 10% reduction in funding for Utah’s public institutions.

In contrast to the Brookings article, the Gardner report did address the enrollment cliff, or slope, or in the case of Utah a dip.

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