As admissions officers prepare for fall recruitment, there’s plenty of doom in the forecast. Pundits and presidents alike say some small colleges, hampered by a weak economy and dwindling demand, will soon shrink, merge, or close.
This prediction is based, in part, on anecdotal evidence. In any given year, it’s easy to find colleges facing an enrollment crisis.
In May, St. Mary’s College of Maryland, a public liberal-arts institution, announced that it had received one-third fewer freshmen deposits than it had expected.
This summer, Loyola University New Orleans became the latest symbol of the Small Struggling College after announcing that it would enroll about 25 percent fewer freshmen than expected, resulting in a $9.5-million shortfall. As The Wall Street Journal reported, some observers see the institution as “a harbinger of an ominous trend for second- and third-tier colleges, as well as niche religious, ethnic or gender-based schools.”
Counter-examples complicate this picture, however. Many colleges that might seem like candidates for a fiscal meltdown, based on their geographic location or sticker price, have seen their enrollment and net revenue rise in recent years. Some are thriving.
Nobody’s saying tuition-dependent colleges, especially those lacking national name recognition, have an easy future. But even as uncontrollable forces—technological change, shifting demographics—reshape higher education, the strategic levers colleges do or do not pull will greatly determine their fortunes, enrollment experts say.
The challenge: identifying the best approaches, which vary from campus to campus. “Boards are either overreacting, saying we should have added MOOCs yesterday, or they’re underreacting,” says David W. Strauss, a principal with the Art & Science Group, a higher-education consulting firm based in Baltimore. “We know you can’t be frozen right now.”
Campus officials and consultants who have helped steer colleges through past enrollment challenges describe several strategies as essential. Those include creating new degree programs to generate additional revenue, assessing the changing needs of core markets, and emphasizing institutional distinctiveness in ways that go beyond mere slogans. And a strategic plan, some officials suggest, should not be longer on wishful thinking than on data-driven goals.
Incremental Growth
Diversifying tuition revenue over many years has helped Concordia University Saint Paul weather a tough economy, says its president, the Rev. Thomas K. Ries. “If I were going to parachute down to another institution, and I had no information other than it had an enrollment problem,” he says, “the thing I would do is get into alternative delivery methods.”
During the 1980s, the Minnesota university saw enrollment shortfalls as it shifted from church- and career-preparation to liberal-arts education. When Concordia created degree-completion programs for adult students midway through that decade, Mr. Ries recalls, “some administrators thought it was crazy.”
Yet that move, he says, was crucial for the institution’s future. So, too, was the decision to expand its graduate programs. Over the last decade or so, Concordia has increased its number of graduate students from 100 to 1,300. Recently, the university has been adding one or two new degree programs each year.
Concordia’s undergraduate enrollment, of 1,100, now represents about 40 percent of all students. The resulting pot of mixed tuition revenue, along with careful planning, enabled the college to consider a new pricing strategy, Mr. Ries says. Last year, Concordia announced that it would slash the sticker price of its undergraduate tuition and fees by $10,000, or about 33 percent, for the 2013-14 academic year.
Market research had convinced Concordia’s leaders that the previous price was discouraging potential applicants. Families in the region would yawn at a $5,000 cut, the research suggested, but they would respond favorably to a $10,000 reduction.
Mr. Ries describes the cut as a way of “getting off the high-tuition, high-discount bandwagon.” Although the reduction in price was accompanied by a reduction in aid, students will now pay a lower net price, by $600 to $6,000, than they would have without the cut, the university says.
Applications for this year’s freshman class increased sharply over last year. Concordia, which had planned to expand its undergraduate population to help offset the loss in tuition, expects to enroll 257 freshmen this fall, 74 more than a year ago.
The “tuition reset” has resonated with middle- and upper-middle-income suburban families especially, Mr. Ries says. Still, many applicants have told him the cut was not their main reason for applying. “It got their attention,” he says, “but they choose us for other reasons. They chose us for our programs.”
Curricular Changes
“Distinctiveness” is one of the most hackneyed words in admissions. Still, if a college lacks it, recruitment can prove challenging, especially for a liberal-arts college competing with similar institutions for the same students.
When Rock Jones became president of Ohio Wesleyan University, in 2008, the institution was in the middle of a rough enrollment cycle. The following year, the number of incoming freshmen dipped. The university responded by cutting its overall budget and trimming staff positions while increasing its spending on aid.
Subsequent market research suggested a problem. “Students were not perceiving distinctions about OWU in ways we had hoped,” Mr. Jones says. “We realized we needed to talk much more clearly about how students can make connections between theory and practice, and we needed to provide ways for students to globalize their experience.”
To that end, Ohio Wesleyan has developed a curricular program called “OWU Connection,” in which students take cross-departmental courses based around a common theme, such as “Crime, Responsibility, and Punishment.” The university also added several study-abroad courses, and Theory-to-Practice grants, which allow students to further their studies around the globe—participating in a field dig on the Aegean coast, for instance, or studying HIV/AIDS policy making in South Africa and Tanzania.
Rebecca Eckstein, vice president for enrollment and strategic communication, says those changes have made her job easier. “A whole lot easier,” she says.
When she arrived, in 2011, the university was still struggling enrollment-wise. It was about to welcome just 511 freshmen, well short of its goal. Her job was to enlarge that number. The university—which has since increased its yield, the percentage of admitted students who enroll, while lowering its discount rate—plans to welcome 592 freshmen this fall, a handful more than its target.
Enhancing social-media outreach has been key, as has enlisting more parents and alumni in recruitment. Ms. Eckstein also started using statistical modeling in admissions decisions, to better predict which applicants would enroll, how much aid to offer them, and which ones were most likely to succeed. Yet those tactics, she suspects, explain only part of the university’s recent enrollment rebound. “It’s because I have this incredible experience to talk about,” she says.
Early on, Ms. Eckstein ordered buttons that say “Ask me” about the Theory-to-Practice grants. Student tour guides are now expected to wear the buttons, ensuring that parents hear all about the program.
‘A Matter of Surviving’
Officials at Notre Dame de Namur University, in Belmont, Calif., were also forced in recent years to take a hard look at their institution. After years of dwindling enrollment, the university reached a low point in 2007. “We had to make some significant changes in order to be sustainable,” says Hernan Bucheli, vice president for external relations. “This was a matter of surviving.”
So Notre Dame de Namur dug into its data. Although admissions officers had been trekking far and wide to recruit, the numbers revealed that most students who enrolled were locals. Enrollment data affirmed that the university was more likely to retain such students than those who came from farther away. “We decided to focus more on the regional market,” Mr. Bucheli says, “instead of traveling all over the country all the time.”
About five years ago, Notre Dame de Namur refined its outreach to Hispanic students, who are a fast-growing segment of California’s population. The Roman Catholic university has since become a Hispanic-serving institution. That designation, which the U.S. Department of Education gives to colleges where at least 25 percent of students are Hispanic, allows institutions to compete for federal grants. So far, Notre Dame de Namur has received two, totaling more than $6-million.
Becoming a Hispanic-serving institution fit the university’s mission of providing greater access to education, Mr. Bucheli says. It has helped the bottom line, too. In 2007, the university had 1,300 students; this year it enrolled a record-high 2,001. “Our financial position is the best it’s ever been,” Mr. Bucheli says.
Notre Dame de Namur has also tapped the transfer market. In a partnership with Mission College, a community college in Santa Clara, Calif., the university now offers a degree-completion program in human services there. “This was a way to franchise our institution to a satellite location,” Mr. Bucheli says.
Under that arrangement, students who complete their general-education requirements can transfer to Notre Dame de Namur but continue taking classes at Mission. Faculty members from Notre Dame de Namur go to Mission’s campus to teach, and Mission provides space for advising. Students who finish the program get a bachelor’s degree from Notre Dame de Namur.
The university has a similar partnership with Cañada College, a community college in Redwood City, Calif., where in addition to a degree-completion program in human services, it offers accelerated degrees in business and psychology.
Those changes weren’t easy to enact, Mr. Bucheli says. For one thing, redefining a university’s priorities requires a lot of buy-in from the campus. “People’s perceptions were different about what the institution should be,” he says. “We didn’t really have a position on what we wanted to do well, so we had to come to terms with how we were going to focus our priorities. Now, regardless of whether they like it or not, people appreciate the direction.”
No innovation is a panacea, of course. Introducing a new academic program isn’t cheap. Revamping curricula takes time, and demands considerable cooperation among administrators and faculty members. And even the best plans might not have a lasting impact on enrollment.
Mr. Ries at Concordia suspects that a college can ride the benefits of a signature change, like cutting tuition, for only three or four years. That means college leaders must continuously anticipate their next move. “You’ve got to be dancing all the time,” he says. But that’s surely preferable to standing still.
