Earlier this year, people who worked at colleges would tell you that there was a palpable nervousness about this fall—a sense that amid an unsteady economy and questions in the popular press about the value of college, bringing in students was going to be tough.
A Chronicle survey of 436 small private colleges and comprehensive state institutions conducted last month offers a glimpse of what colleges might actually be facing in terms of enrollment and revenue. In the survey, conducted with the American Association of State Colleges and Universities and the Council of Independent Colleges, nearly half of the respondents said that they missed either their enrollment or their net-tuition-revenue goals.
Respondents also indicated that they were putting more money into financial aid, often to respond to unexpected enrollment figures.
But the survey results also showed that many institutions were adapting to a challenging environment. More than half of the colleges met or exceeded their enrollment or their revenue goals—often, anecdotes and comments suggest, through deliberate strategies.
“We were successful in targeting a smaller entering class at a lower discount rate,” writes one respondent from a Catholic college in the Midwest that exceeded its revenue goals. “We are ahead financially, and the smaller class allows for more intentional retention efforts.”
Pennsylvania’s Albright College, facing declining enrollment, increased financial-aid offerings to attract more students. It worked, drawing in 65 more freshmen than the expected 590, says Andrea Chapdelaine, the university’s provost. “There’s no doubt we kind of felt we were rolling the dice,” Ms. Chapdelaine says, adding that the institution will scale back its financial aid next year as it would not have space for another big class.
Missing an enrollment goal didn’t always mean that the college was suffering. Fort Hays State University, in Kansas, said that it had missed its enrollment goals—but only because administrators had set them very high, said Lawrence V. Gould, the provost. This fall’s freshman enrollment was about 960, the highest ever for the university, which was shooting for 1,000.
And among colleges that saw shortfalls, some comments from the respondents indicated that those colleges had recently experienced years of healthy growth. “That is what we are hearing from our members—that there is a bunch of bouncing around,” says Harold V. Hartley III, senior vice president at the Council of Independent Colleges.
Long-Term Concerns
Glenn Sharfman, vice president for academic affairs at Manchester University, in Indiana, says that despite shortfalls in the past two years, his institution’s enrollment has generally gone up since 2008.
But he has worries about the long-term picture. “We are seeing less revenue per student,” he says. “We lost people who really wanted to make it work, but couldn’t. We are facing an issue that we hadn’t faced before, with students who are applying for loans, who would have gotten loans in the past, but now are not getting them.”
To no one’s surprise, the surveyed colleges showed a strong correlation between enrollment goals and a healthy balance sheet. Only 19 AASCU institutions and 28 CIC institutions were able to meet their revenue goals without also meeting their enrollment targets.
The smaller a university’s size, the more likely it was to miss the mark on enrollment, survey results showed. Of the 109 CIC institutions that did not hit enrollment targets, 65 had fewer than 1,500 students enrolled. In the same category for AASCU institutions, almost 75 percent had fewer than 10,000 students.
Success also varied by region. More than half of CIC respondents in the Great Lakes region did not meet their enrollment goals, while more than one-third of AASCU institutions that did not meet their targets came from the Southeast.
Central Michigan University fell short of its enrollment goal by a few hundred students. “Our numbers were a little better than our bleakest forecast,” says Robert M. Roe, the new executive director of institutional research and planning. The challenge, he says, has to do with location: “It’s beautiful around here, but even if you live in a neighboring state, like Wisconsin or Illinois, it’s a long way to get here.”
The university is now “scrambling” to figure out why the numbers are dropping and how to get prospective students to see the value of the institution. “There is no low-hanging fruit anymore. All the good students are being recruited. It’s a tough world,” Mr. Roe said.
Administrators at Georgia’s Dalton State College saw the impact of the recession in the region as a primary reason for two years of drops in the size of its freshman class. The reaction to enrolling the same size freshman class as last year?
“Yay, we’re flat,” said Sandra Stone, the college’s vice president for academic affairs, though she acknowledged the cost of leveling off was high, taking the form of program cuts, furloughs, and slashing tutoring services. Tightening belts also meant reducing the number of career and personal counselors to one—for 5,000 students, Ms. Stone said.
“I think maybe we kind of stabilized,” Ms. Stone said.
A college’s challenges could be idiosyncratic: At Concordia University Texas, which enrolls about 2,500, a higher-than-usual turnover in athletic coaches hamstrung recruiting, which led to a 40-student shortfall in enrollment, said Alan Runge, the university’s provost. As Concordia entered the “major end push” of the recruiting process, Mr. Runge said, about half of its coaching spots were empty. But a shift in student need resulted in a decreased discount rate, allowing Concordia to meet its revenue goal, Mr. Runge said.
‘Off With Their Heads’
Over all, the survey results and responses for CIC and AASCU institutions were similar, but there were a few interesting divergences. Among colleges that fell short in enrollment, 43 percent of CIC institutions said that students were dropping off at the deposit stage, and about 30 percent saw students lose interest at the enrollment stage.
Meanwhile, among the AASCU institutions, nearly 62 percent saw students drop off at the enrollment stage.
George L. Mehaffy, vice president for academic leadership and change at AASCU, guessed that the high drop-off at the last stage could mean that students were using the state institutions as safety schools, deciding at the last minute to go somewhere else. Or those colleges might be attracting a population particularly vulnerable to being knocked off the college track by life events.
In terms of how colleges would respond to enrollment challenges, one solution stood out: A vast majority of small colleges and state institutions said they would “improve enrollment-management operations.”
“Of course, it’s ‘off with their heads,’” Mr. Mehaffy says.
Improving marketing and starting attractive new programs were also strongly favored responses. But the state institutions and private colleges diverged on a key response: About 24 percent of CIC institutions, versus 39 percent of AASCU institutions, would consider eliminating low-enrolled academic programs.
Richard Ekman, president of the Council of Independent Colleges, said that made sense. “Small institutions understand that the idea that cutting things out is not such a great idea, because you risk cutting bone as well as fat,” he says.
But it was clear from the comments of survey respondents that some institutions were flustered by the challenging environment, and that solutions weren’t altogether clear.
“One of our largest problems is with the fact that we no longer seem to be able to rely upon the predictors we could rely upon in the past,” said one small college in the South that missed both its enrollment and revenue goals by more than 5 percent. “Even our experienced hired consultants are finding themselves at a loss to work with our data to make predictions on enrollment.” Without good data and solid predictions, administrators weren’t sure what to change to right their ship.
Jonah Newman contributed to this article.
