Regional public colleges are the backbone of American higher education and, somehow, also one of its best-kept secrets. They educate nearly 5 million students every year, including almost half of all bachelor’s-degree-seeking students at four-year institutions and nearly half of all Black and Latinx students. Yet they’re typically eclipsed by their public-flagship siblings in the popular imagination and left out of the prevailing narrative about “college” by much of the media.
Their traditional mission of broad access and teaching rather than prestige and research may be leaving them at a further disadvantage in an increasingly competitive student-recruiting market, according to a new survey by the Art & Science Group, a company that consults colleges on strategy and market research. Art & Science surveyed 778 respondents who intended to attend a four-year institution in the fall of 2022 and found that the only competitive advantage regional publics had over other types of colleges was their relatively low price.
Being an affordable option is good, right? Not necessarily these days, says David Strauss, a principal of Art & Science. Shifting demographics have led to increased competition for students, which has led public flagships and private colleges to more aggressively recruit, and admit, a wider array of students. Between 2010 and 2021, enrollment at public flagships rose 12.3 percent nationwide, according to a Chronicle analysis, while enrollment at regional publics fell by more than 4 percent. Enrollment at regional institutions in some states has fallen by double-digit percentages in recent years.
For the many students for whom proximity and price matter most, regional publics or community colleges may still be the best option, but for students who may have more choice, the price advantage “is overwhelmed by the perceived lag on stature and other things,” Strauss says, and regional publics “are at pretty dramatic competitive disadvantage on a whole bunch of things that matter to kids.” According to the survey results, for example, they trail behind public flagships and private research universities in the perception of how well they train students in professional fields and in overall ranking. (Strauss says that while students don’t really care about rankings, specifically, in his experience, many do care about prestige more generally.) Private colleges were perceived as being stronger on student-professor interaction.
If regional publics want to increase their enrollments, Strauss says, reaching out beyond their immediate areas may not be effective, as they may not have the profile to do so. And, as institutions that are often underfunded compared with their states’ flagships, they may not have the resources for major branding campaigns. They have to do something that many other colleges are trying to do in the current landscape — find something distinctive to offer. They have to “work on evolving the student experience in a way that is appealing enough that they can hold on to more of the students in their own backyard and be appealing in their target markets,” he says. “That’s not a game that’s been played effectively by a lot of these institutions.”
The Power of Price
Regional publics do have strengths to draw on. A third, or 35 percent, of respondents to the Art & Science survey identified a regional public as a realistic first choice, making them and national publics (32 percent) the most-popular institution types among full-time four-year college applicants. In addition, 40 percent of Black respondents and 43 percent of first-generation college attendees indicated a regional public as their first choice.
The market has shifted away from regional publics dramatically.
Mildred García, the president of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, known as Aascu, and the newly announced president of the California State University system, says she’s “upset” by the survey’s focus on affordability as regional publics’ only asset. “We’re serving the first generation, low income, students of color, and the adults,” she says. “We have to keep it affordable.” Regional publics are educating “the new majority” of America — nearly half of all Hispanic-serving institutions are Aascu members — and supplying many of the degrees in fields like health care and education. García thinks other colleges are increasingly recruiting students who would have attended regional publics in the past “because they too need enrollments,” she says. “I’m just hoping that they know how to serve the students.”
The Art & Science survey was intended to help regional publics, not insult them, says Craig Goebel, a principal of the firm, in response to García. Affordability and access are key to the institutions’ missions, but “the market has shifted away from regional publics dramatically,” Goebel says. “It’s really about finding where the substantive strengths of the institution can differentiate them from these other institutions vying for the same students.”
When it comes to a recruiting strategy, don’t underestimate the power of price, says Daniel Greenstein, chancellor of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, known as Passhe. The system’s 10 universities have been through years of enrollment troubles, losing nearly a third of their students since 2010. But the system is now in the sixth year of a tuition freeze, and “the price gap between us and our nearest competitor in terms of price is actually growing,” Greenstein says. The average cost of attendance for an in-state undergraduate attending a Passhe university in the fall of 2022 was $22,088, while it was a minimum of $26,950 to attend one of Pennsylvania State University’s Commonwealth Campuses. In the fall of 2022, Passhe increased its new-student enrollment over the previous year for the first time since 2010.
Location is a powerful factor in the college-going decision, too. A 2014 study found that nearly 60 percent of freshmen at a four-year public college had enrolled at an institution within 50 miles of their home. Factor in the expense of college and the accompanying public narrative around student debt, and choosing a regional public is “not this grand, sophisticated decision,” says Andrew Koricich, an associate professor of higher education at Appalachian State University, in Boone, N.C., and executive director of its Alliance for Research on Regional Colleges. “It’s about proximity, and it’s about cost.” The Art & Science survey found that the average family income of respondents whose first-choice institution was a regional public was about $80,000, while the family income of respondents whose first choice was a public flagship was about $105,000.
Choosing a regional public can also be a complex calculation, Koricich says. Regional publics like Appalachian State may not not be perceived as being strong in professional fields or be highly regarded for their student-professor interactions, but they compare relatively well with the top institutions in those categories. “Coming in second place on some of these,” he says, “when combined with affordability is going to make you the first-choice institution” for some students.
We have to be honest about the ways in which things like rankings and the media present this stratification of institutions that really isn’t based on anything but elitism.
The survey also focuses on traditional-age students, a shrinking and highly contested demographic. “As we look into the next 15 to 20 years, we have to do better at getting adult students to meet enrollment goals,” Koricich says. The 40 million adults in this country with some college credit and no degree are often considered a huge untapped market for colleges, but adults need different things than traditional-age students do — more support, more online and evening classes, more flexibility, a more career-oriented focus, and affordability. If the Art & Science survey had sampled prospective adult students, Koricich says, regional publics would have fared better.
Ultimately, the decision to choose a college can be influenced by a consumer mindset, in which cost gets conflated with quality, says Felecia Commodore, an associate professor of education at Old Dominion University. Speaking from her car, she notes that her Honda Civic does exactly what a Porsche does — it will get her from point A to point B. “But there is a perception created by marketing, by the way in which we position or talk about or say something is like a luxury brand, like a Porsche, that for many consumers justifies that car costing more, even if ultimately, they do the same thing,” she says. In the case of colleges, she says, cost may be thought of as producing a larger return, not necessarily in terms of educational quality, but in “social access to spaces that I may not have had access to otherwise, a reputational kind of clout.” In that sense, she says, the results of the survey “really don’t shock me at all.”
Telling the Story Better
Is there anything to be learned from the Art & Science survey? Experts say that the institutions need to do a better job emphasizing their strengths.
We’ve got to sell. We’re not used to selling.
For example, there’s no reason why regional public colleges shouldn’t be considered strong on professional programs, says Greenstein, the Passhe chancellor. Many regional public campuses began as teachers’ colleges, so their deepest roots are in work-force education, and career-oriented degrees remain their emphasis. Even though the Passhe system has lost nearly a third of its enrollment overall since 2010, Greenstein says, the number of graduates in business, education, health care, and other STEM fields that the system produces each year has grown.
Getting the word out to students about connecting to a career through their local public college may be a little challenging, however. “For structural, historical reasons, public regionals have been slower to wake up to or integrate current practices in enrollment management and in marketing recruitment,” Greenstein says. “We’ve got to sell. We’re not used to selling.” And institutions have to build these capabilities while operating on tight budgets and competing in a tough student-recruiting market.
There are resources available to help regional publics — Aascu is using funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to help member institutions develop their messaging — but much of the needed outreach doesn’t have to be costly, says García. College leaders need to do a better job educating counselors in nearby high schools, community colleges, churches, and community organizations — “in their language and in their space,” García says — about regional publics and what they can offer. “Our classes are small,” she adds. “Faculty are teaching them,” as opposed to teaching assistants. “Use your students, use your alumni to go out and tell the story.”
Another problem is the media’s disproportionate focus on national, highly selective institutions, which entirely leaves out regional publics from the conversation. “We have to be honest about the ways in which things like rankings and the media present this stratification of institutions that really isn’t based on anything but elitism,” says Commodore, of Old Dominion. She notes that the recent furor over the Supreme Court decision regarding race-conscious admissions that dominated headlines for weeks — including at The Chronicle — concerned a thin strata of elite colleges and had no impact on the vast number of institutions that educate almost all students.
But regional publics may have to do more than get better at telling a story. It’s important that students have access to affordable colleges, but it’s also important that they be able to succeed once they’re enrolled and have decent residence halls to stay in and faculty who aren’t overstretched. “Affordability is one thing, resources are another,” Commodore says. “Institutional leaders really need to start to consider, Where else are they placing investments in their campus to ensure that their campuses are attractive, other than being a bargain?”