Wilson College: Moving Away From Tradition
After its enrollment dropped below 700—with only 316 in the all-female undergraduate program—Wilson College, in Pennsylvania, took a big turn away from tradition. Two years ago its trustees approved a controversial plan that included admitting men to its undergraduate program, cutting $5,000 off the sticker price of tuition, adding more nontraditional programs, and promising to reward students who finish in four years by buying back $10,000 worth of their student loans.
While some alumnae remain outraged, this past fall Wilson enrolled its largest freshman class in 40 years—in part because the college attracted women who wouldn’t have considered a women-only institution.
But the clock is ticking on admissions gains. In 2019, the college must begin making $1-million payments annually on the principal of a big loan it took out before the recession to finance a new science building. Administrators figure they’ll need an enrollment near 1,500 to generate enough revenue. In the current environment, “you really have got to be anticipating the future and be able to tee it up ahead of time,” says Barbara K. Mistick, the president. “In the higher-education business model, it takes longer to see the impacts of change.”
Centenary College of Louisiana: Betting on Versailles
Centenary College of Louisiana, in Shreveport, took nearly its entire freshman class—126 students—on a 10-day trip to Paris as part of an August “immersive term” that the college marketed widely. Students earned four credits for whichever one of a variety of Paris-focused courses they took, including classes on French business practices, sustainability, and Les Miserables. A similar trip is planned this summer.
Centenary’s situation is not one any college wants to be in. When B. David Rowe was hired as the president, in 2009, he found an institution that had been running big deficits, spending down its endowment, and letting residence halls go unrenovated. Layoffs followed, along with a decision to leave the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s Division 1, of which it had long been the smallest member, for Division III. Mr. Rowe asked the faculty to cut a million dollars out of the instructional budget, then $11-million, and come up with a plan for sustainability. The college, which had about 850 students, slashed the number of majors it offered from 44 to 22—but it took a hit in admissions as well. It’s down to 640 students this year.
Now, Mr. Rowe hopes, things are starting to turn around. Despite a drop in the number of high-school students in Louisiana, “we’re up 18 percent in applications and 29 percent in admitted students for next year,” he says. “We’ve raised tuition and lowered the discount rate. On a gross basis, we’ve increased the net per student.”
As for this year’s freshmen, and next year’s, they’ll always have Paris. “At Versailles,” says Mr. Rowe, who went along, “most of us finished the tour right before lunch, and we were sitting on the back steps and students kept asking questions until the professor gave an impromptu 15-minute lecture on Louis XIV. Instead of PowerPoints, he had all the props right there. It was more than we could have imagined.”
Caldwell University: ‘A College With a Liberal-Arts Foundation’
When Caldwell University’s current president, Nancy H. Blattner, took office in 2009, no one had told her or the Board of Trustees how bad the Roman Catholic college’s financial situation was. At an emergency board meeting, she got a green light to move forward with a recovery effort, but the trustees also asked her to prepare a plan to close the university, just in case.
Caldwell, which now has 1,262 students and an $8-million endowment, has since been working to diversify its revenue streams because—as Ms. Blattner puts it—"kids are just not gonna come drop in our laps anymore.” It has a range of nontraditional offerings—online courses, programs for veterans and active members of the armed forces, and more—though Ms. Blattner says not all faculty members are comfortable with the de facto evolution of the New Jersey institution.
“We bill ourselves as a liberal-arts college,” says Ms. Blattner, “but we’re not. We’re a college with a liberal-arts foundation. The vast majority of students are pre-professional.” —Lawrence Biemiller
Lawrence Biemiller writes about a variety of usual and unusual higher-education topics. Reach him at lawrence.biemiller@chronicle.com.
