Denver — As state support has dropped, public universities have become more reliant on tuition revenue. And that puts a lot more pressure on enrollment management at those institutions.
That was one of the main takeaways from a session here on Friday at the annual meeting of the National Association for College Admission Counseling.
One panelist, Kimberly Scranage, vice president for enrollment management at Shepherd University, in West Virginia, said that over time her institution had moved from being state financed, to state supported, to state recognized, to state located.
Public universities are starting to look more like private ones, said Michael Kabbaz, associate vice president for enrollment management at Miami University, in Ohio. But while states have reduced their financial support of colleges, they have not cut back on their opinions or expectations, he said. States still pay attention to the access their colleges provide and to the outcomes they produce.
Not only is state support declining, but some states are changing how they allocate the money they do provide to colleges, said Paul Hamborg, president of Enrollment Research Associates, a consulting firm. Traditionally, states have distributed their dollars based on a head count of students, Mr. Hamborg said. But now, some are basing their support on colleges’ retention, course-completion, and graduation rates.
That shift changes the goals of enrollment management, Mr. Hamborg said. “In the environment where we get paid by the head,” he said, colleges’ natural response is “bring them all in.”
But if colleges are rewarded based on student outcomes, it makes more sense for them to provide scholarships to attract the strongest students, Mr. Hamborg said. The colleges will lose out on some tuition revenue at first, but that money will be made up by the state funds they’ll get when stronger students are retained.
In that financing model, enrollment managers have to do more than simply hit their numbers, Mr. Hamborg said. The new challenge, he said, is figuring out how to “shape the class to better fit the incentives states are offering.”
