In a recent blog post, I wrote about Professor Steven Mintz’s article titled The Revolution in Higher Education is Already Underway.
Another recent post reviewed Bob Zemsky’s and Lori Carrell’s recent book, Communicate for a Change. The nine conversations that they chose to write about are relevant to the “revolution already underway.” The first conversation, Why Can’t We Talk About the Mess We’re In?, may be the most relevant for outsiders curious why changes in higher ed haven’t moved faster.
There were four other articles and reports published last week that provide more evidence that the revolution is here to stay. The National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) issued their Fall 2021 enrollment report. Higher education enrollment fell 2.7 percent in the fall. This continued the downward trend exacerbated by the pandemic. Since the fall of 2019, enrollment has declined 5.1 percent approximating 938,000 students overall.
Inside Higher Ed’s coverage of the NSC report noted that Clearinghouse personnel were surprised at the enrollment drop of 251,000 at public four-year institutions this fall. Adult students over 24 years old experienced the largest decline at 3.4 percent.
Phil Hill, author of Phil on EdTech, authored two articles on the enrollment drop. His first explained the differences between the NSC data and the IPEDS (Department of Education) data. Since the IPEDS data is the official government source, but the NSC data is reported quicker, he extracted NSC data and added it to a sequential report of IPEDS enrollment from 2012 through 2021. As you can see from the shaded area in his graphic below, the pandemic has exacerbated a slow decline.
The graphic illustrates the previously published results indicating that the greatest decline due to the pandemic is in the public 2-year (community college) sector. Given the sector’s high percentage of non-traditional, working students, this is no surprise. Many students were impacted by having jobs that required an in-person presence during the pandemic and those needing childcare services were also impacted by the closures of many daycare centers.
Phil Hill’s second article provides an additional revelation. Hill notes that the slide in his previous article portrayed a minimally impacted private 4-year sector using the IPEDs data when many thought that sector would be the most at risk for enrollment declines.
Hill decided to look at the growth of three private four-years with large online populations (Southern New Hampshire University, Western Governors University, and Liberty University) and how that impacted overall four-year private non-profit enrollments. Since the NSC data is not reported by institution, he was only able to extract the data from 2012 through 2020 using IPEDS. Removing those three institutions whose aggressive marketing has resulted in huge enrollment increases takes the sector from an overall 5.1 percent increase to a decline of 1.1 percent. See the graphic below.
By the way, it would be interesting to see what a similar exercise would look like if Purdue Global, Arizona State University, and University of Maryland Global were removed from the public four-year enrollment numbers.
Nonetheless, it’s safe to say that most of the enrollment gains of WGU, SNHU, and Liberty are online enrollments, not campus-based (note: WGU is online only). I expect that when the Fall 2021 data is reported by IPEDS, the gap will be larger with these three institutions removed.
The Chronicle of Higher Education featured an article this week written by Sarah Brown about the state of North Carolina’s radical college affordability program called NC Promise.
NC Promise lowers tuition to $500 per semester for in-state students and $2,500 for out-of-state students at three universities in the University of North Carolina System. It may be the only state-sponsored promise program that isolates the first dollar program to three universities in the state and includes a lower tuition for out-of-state students. Elizabeth City State University (ECSU), UNC Pembroke, and Western Carolina are the three universities where any student enrolling receives this benefit regardless of financial need. When the program was proposed by North Carolina’s Republican politicians in 2016, political backlash caused two HBCU’s (Fayetteville State University and Winston-Salem State University) to ask to be removed from the program.
Enrollments are up since the program’s implementation at all three universities. ECSU’s enrollments are up more than 50 percent. The program’s success has convinced politicians to allow Fayetteville State to join the program this fall.
Enrollment during the pandemic has plateaued at all three universities. While overall enrollments are up, it’s mostly transfer students who have driven those increases. The graphic below shows the overall enrollment for each institution since the program’s implementation.
All three institutions selected for NC Promise are in economically depressed areas of the state of North Carolina. The success of the program has meant increased cost in the state higher ed budget, but legislators thus far accept those increases as recognizing the program’s success. Recognizing that tuition alone may not make a difference in attendance, this year ECSU received $125 million for capital funding from the state’s covid funds. The Senate’s leader did not rule out a potential enrollment cap in a few years if the program is too successful.
The UNC System is studying the success of the program. Among the research questions that they’re researching are (1) did the low tuition increase the number of Pell students attending each institution and (2) is the lower tuition increasing the number of out-of-state students attending? I would also conduct research on where the transfer students are coming from. Are they from state two-year colleges or private four-year colleges with higher tuition? Because of the limited program access to these three institutions, only 12 percent of the UNC System students are benefitting from the low tuition under NC Promise.
Last week, Texas 2036 President Margaret Spellings issued her annual report. She points out that every statewide elected office will be open in 2022 and it’s important for Texans to have a unified vision of the future. Investing in the state’s people should be at the top of the list.
Ms. Spellings hammers the performance of Texas’ education system citing its low performance in reading (more than half of students can’t read at grade level) and math (nearly three fourths can’t do math at grade level). If Texas can better leverage the $100 billion spent annually on workforce and education, the gap between skills employers need and those that Texans have will be reduced.
By 2036, more than 70 percent of jobs are expected to require some post-secondary credential. As of today, 14 years away, only 32 percent of Texas’ high school graduates earn such credentials within six years of completing high school. Thanks to new legislation, those numbers should improve, but Ms. Spellings writes that Texans can’t let their guard down.
Ms. Spellings’ report aligns with a recent article from Work Shift written by Jewel Jackson. The 60x30TX plan was proposed by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board in 2015. I wrote about the plan in June.
According to Ms. Jackson, Harrison Keller, the Texas commissioner of higher education, announced that the 60x30TX plan has been updated to reflect the new reality of higher education and work in the state (plan has not been officially adopted and thus is not available to the public yet).
The new plan, “Building a Talent Strong Texas”, will expand the existing goals and add new ones. The target population will now include the 35–64-year-old workers and not just those 25-34. Ms. Jackson quoted Mr. Keller as stating that the pandemic showed how much older adults need to build new skills and earn credentials as well.
The new plan will also recognize non-traditional educational credits, including certificates achieved through training provided by Google, LinkedIn, and other web-based platforms. It’s important to note that all these non-traditional credits will need to be “credentials of value that translate into better incomes for students and families.”
The plan will also change its original target of keeping student debt below 60 percent of first-year wages, a marker that Mr. Keller stated was “not an intuitive approach.” The state will focus more on developing financial literacy skills in high school and helping students understand the typical wages that come with specific credentials and careers, and how those wages relate to any debts incurred to pay for college.
Lastly, California Governor Gavin Newsom issued his proposed 2022-2023 state budget and included nearly $40 billion in funding for higher education. The extra money comes with a few goals that the governor wants the state’s higher ed system to achieve.
The first of Gov. Newsom’s goals is that 70 percent of working-aged Californians will hold a postsecondary degree or certificate by 2030. Note that this is higher than Texas’ 60 percent target (which is likely to change). His budget would also pay for an increased number of in-state students at Cal State (9,434) and the University of California (7,132). His proposal would push the California Community College System to improve its time-to-degree metrics and certificate completion as well as to facilitate transfer of its students to four-year colleges and universities.
The significance of these articles and reports that were issued last week relates to the transformation (or revolution as expressed by Dr. Mintz) going on in higher education.
As reported by the National Student Clearinghouse, overall higher education enrollments are down again for the fall of 2021. Two-year colleges have decreased the most, but if you deduct the online enrollment growth for just three private four-year colleges, the four-year private sector is down as well. The degrees experiencing the most growth across all sectors are computer science and information technology degrees. Online enrollment growths continue to be centered in a few very large institutions.
A generous Promise program in North Carolina limited to three universities in low-income areas of the state is making a difference in enrollments, particularly transfer students. The lower cost program was cited by several students as the primary reason they selected these institutions. It will be interesting to read the outcomes from research that the University of North Carolina System plans to conduct to determine who chooses these schools and why. However, the pandemic has caused these enrollments to plateau calling into question the perceived benefit of attending a residential institution when the socialization opportunities are limited.
The second largest state in the country, Texas, called out its disappointing results in reading and math for its K-12 students and is expanding its postsecondary completion targets to include older adults as well as non-academic certificates offered by employers like Google and Amazon provided they add value. The ratio of first year earnings to debt will no longer be as important as providing the state’s high school students with financial literacy education that informs them about the earnings of specific jobs and careers as well as the potential education costs for those certificates and degrees. That would be an initiative that I would welcome at all 50 states. Texas’s postsecondary completion and earnings outcomes are updated annually by school and county and are also broken out by race.
The governor of California, the largest state in the country, has proposed increased funding to its state colleges and universities but with targeted increases in in-state students served, improved time to completion for degrees as well as improved certificate completion, especially for the state’s community colleges. It will be interesting to track the final metrics and funds allocated after the legislature approves them in May.
While the pandemic is being blamed for some of the enrollment declines that we’re seeing in higher education, I believe that it was more of an accelerant of a trend already underway. When residential campuses walked away from their in-person classes and on-campus residences in the spring of 2020 and sent everyone home to take online classes, the value of the college experience was questioned by many for the first time.
Thanks to advances in technology, we are able to learn from any place where we have an internet connection and a smart phone, tablet, or computer. Why should tuition, room and board range from nearly free to $75,000 per year? Why should we pay for degrees that don’t provide career outcomes better than high school degrees? Why should students and their parents borrow to attend college? Whether you call it a disruption, revolution, or transformation, higher education will see many changes over the next few years with the students as the major beneficiaries, financially and educationally. This is the tip of the iceberg.
