2022-23 enrollment and signs of 2023-24

I previously offered a cumulative post of the 2022-23 enrollment outlook. Early figures painted a picture of continued decline of enrollment at U.S.A. institutions of 1.1%. The National Student Clearinghouse warned, "Our biggest concern is that we aren't seeing a huge upsurge back in freshman enrollment at four-year institutions. So those two lost years of high school graduates who didn't enroll in fall 2020 or fall 2021, there's not a lot of evidence of them coming back." A portion of the COVID graduates appear to have found other paths outside of higher education.

Three-fourths of Americans believe that a higher education is as, if not more, important than it was 20 years ago. But the bottom line related to maintaining, or potentially growing, enrollment is that the cost of attendance is a barrier for 41% of those who are presently, were previously, or never enrolled.

The latest National Student Clearinghouse figures show that enrollment for 2022-23 is up by comparison to 2021-22. "Freshman enrollment was up across all higher education sectors, with the greatest growth coming from community colleges, which gained 42,000 first-year students since last fall, an increase of 6.1 percent." The Latino, Asian, and Native American numbers increased and Black first-year students remained essentially the same. Spring 2023 enrollment was flat, with some shifts in where students attend.

The "good news" for 2022-23 requires tempering with other estimates that predict immediate 2023-24 decline on top of the steady decline over the last dozen years. This decline will encounter a demographic shift in 2025 that will likely challenge institutions even more. The question of enrollment, and how it sustains budgets and institutional infrastructure will require adaptation across the spectrum of higher education. Examples of necessary change include inclusion of career-related issues in liberal arts institutions, regional public institutions offering a broader mix of credentialing, cooperation across state borders, and community college consortium models. Higher education may also move back to its "sweet spot" of the 1960s and 1970s - baby boomers. However, the baby boomers looked very different than the more diverse youth of the 2020s.

The early 2023-24 trends favored students of high socio-economic backgrounds and international students and also resulted in competitive colleges leading in numbers. The rise in Common Application submissions per student requires consideration by institutions seeking to yield their target enrollment. One of the most troubling parts of the competition is that several elite institutions settled in a class action lawsuit alleging collusion for decades in financial aid practices that ultimately benefitted students from higher socio-economic backgrounds.

Because standardized testing was judged to negatively impacted the prospect of students from diverse backgrounds, a number of institutions moved to test-optional applications. Columbia University was the first Ivy League institution to go test-optional in order to embrace more wholistic admission criteria. As the impact of not requiring tests scores in the admission process emerged, students faced a confusing patchwork of approaches.

Early-decision programs also accelerated, perhaps as a strategy to grab enrollment before other institutions have a chance. The major problem with this is that privileged students are the primary participants and beneficiaries and most of the early decision programs are found in small and elite colleges.

During good economic times, enrollments generally decline and then rebound under poor conditions. With the U.S.A. presently in an in between time, this trend may not be relevant. However, the decline in trust of higher education, especially among more conservative families, is a new factor that may be impacting enrollment trends. The political leaning of where higher education institutions are located is now beginning to factor into students' choices. Especially when cost is an issue for everyone, finding ways to revive a commitment to higher education is essential. Challenging the myth of higher education not reflecting the "real world" should be coupled with institutions committing to being learner and learning-centered. These images have potential appeal for those who aspire to attend college as well as skeptics who often don't buy that investing in a college education is worth it. The caveat on learning-centered practice is that researchers have found that "flipped classrooms" are not living up to their hype. The skeptics are found most often among more conservative groups, a dynamic that will likely continue to impact higher education pricing and ultimate enrollment.

Rising tuition is an outcome of a trend that started in the years of Ronald Reagan's governorship in California. Prior to his years, California boasted one of the best and least expensive systems in the U.S.A. With his persistence, the trend reversed in California and perhaps the entire nation. And now we are in a period where the public benefit of going to college is no longer recognized. As Nicole Barbaro indicates, "The cost of college today is economically too high, but there is another - though less tangible - cost of today's high tuition prices: the loss of intellectual curiosity. By approaching higher education primarily as a means to pursue job training, for which students should be responsible for paying the bulk of the costs, we have successfully stifled the notion of learning for learning's sake - and made doing so unaffordable to most." The conclusion that is increasingly being reached is that college attendance and completion is both/and - it should provide career preparation and it clearly leads to graduates' personal development, a worthy goal in itself.

Innovations such as direct admissions are boosting application numbers at many institutions but the degree of "melt" in admission is unpredictable. Direct admission has potential benefits to both institutions and students and may actually demonstrate the irrelevance of the application processes of the last seven decades. One thing that may help is that most institutions have not raised tuition, although the impact of inflation for all institutions has not yet been taken into account in pricing. Other colleges are cutting tuition - dramatically - as a "reset" of tuition pricing, and accompanying discounting, that got out of hand. Ironically, low-income students' cost of attendance increased at a faster rate than high-income students at a sample of 700 institutions. Some institutions are involving faculty in applicant review, which helps manage workload as well as offers faculty an insider's view of the complexities of recruitment and admission functions. In order to secure the optimal enrollment, a number of institutions have extended the deadline for student acceptance decisions.

The economic futures of higher education institutions are mixed which has resulted in state systems initiating education campaigns to reinforce the benefit of pursuing advanced education. Baum and McPherson describe ways for higher education to respond to economic pressures in their book, Campus Economics. Higher education in the U.S.A. is very diverse and institutions are best served to distinguish themselves by sectors and what they do best. Elite private institutions, such as Stanford University, are able to increase tuition charges while redirecting some of the revenue to more scholarships and financial aid to maintain enrollment.

As the demographics of the U.S.A. continue to diversify, students of color are increasingly sought to bolster enrollment. However, long-term systemic racism among students of color made them more vulnerable to dropping out, a complication that some institutions are attempting to counter with greater support from cultural centers. The need for greater financial assistance is one of the primary impediments to attendance and retention. The Biden administration initiative to cancel previous student loan debt is an important step to rectify historic disadvantage. However, the executive branch action is likely to be overturned by the Supreme Court. Nontraditional students are an increasing proportion of those who could potentially enroll but their special circumstances have to be considered as central, rather than marginal, to institution leaders. Going forward, institutions will have to determine pricing structures that offer more opportunity to diverse populations if they are to hold enrollment proportions even close to former decades. The Disney World strategy rewarding those who pay higher prices with line-jumping privileges should not be a model emulated in higher education.

Increased international student enrollment bolstered the budgets of many institutions prior to the pandemic. However, the number of internationals dropped dramatically when the pandemic took hold; the numbers rebounded but have not returned to previous levels. William Brustein, who stepped down from his position because he saw a decline in WVU's commitment to internationalization, proposed, "elite institutions like those in the Ivy League won't have trouble recruiting wealthy international students or forging partnerships around the world... but other institutions may not fare so well, due to the high cost of U.S. undergraduate education, coupled with shifting views of its value abroad and a decline in support from college administrators." The latest figures indicate that new international student enrollment has rebounded to almost pre-pandemic levels, with graduate students driving much of the surge. Recruiters and institutions need to examine how the international students who seek U.S.A. education are the same or different than other students. In fact, based on common application data, international prospects differ significantly from typical domestic students. One significant difference is that 40% of international students are increasingly uncomfortable with gun violence in the U.S.A. while employment opportunity during and after study as well as the cost of living impacts others.

Inside Higher Education's compilation of enrollment management strategies is a resource for those seeking to maximize success in a shifting and competitive environment. Benchmarking and outlier innovation reveals that improving enrollment management is pretty straight-forward. Facing inflation and rising salary pressure, college leaders favor revenue recovery through retention of current students or finding ways to bring students who stopped-out back. Commitment to improving retention and graduation is key and fortunately enough, indications that degree completion had stalled were later determined to actually be improving. On the other hand, students' low use of and dissatisfaction with advising services does not bode well for using advising as a strength. Soliciting donor support is another strategy but success in raising enough money to make a difference is challenging.

Students' degree completion dropped in fall 2022 for the first time since 2012, an indication that U.S.A. higher education is at a critical juncture. Confidence in higher education as a public good is no longer the common view of the goal of going to college. And, the costs are too high. Perhaps helping to reverse rising costs, federal earmarks include $1.7 billion for 550 colleges and universities across the U.S.A. State support for public institutions has increased but concerns are already being expressed if the increases will be sustained. And, the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education (FIPSE) is investing $30 Million in improvement grants to help push the envelop of innovation.