Unlikely Enrollment Success Stories

For the past year, college enrollment predictions have been bleak.

As the botched rollout of the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid cut into completion rates, soothsayers predicted a similarly steep drop in fall enrollment. The Supreme Court’s affirmative action ban, combined with increasingly aggressive attacks from state legislatures, has eaten away at higher ed’s public image. And doubts that a college degree is worth the cost continue to mount among the general public.

So for regional public universities that expected to feel the worst effects of those shifts, it came as a pleasant surprise when they began to see positive—even historic—enrollment growth this fall.

Some have new leadership or recruitment strategies to thank; others may be the beneficiaries of tailwinds outside their control. For most of the institutions profiled below, big enrollment boosts are less a sign of growth to come than they are necessary correctives to the devastating declines of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Still, such recovery is crucial for regional public universities more broadly. Robert Massa, a veteran enrollment manager and co-founder of the consulting firm Enrollment Intelligence Now, said that given the rapidly shifting enrollment and demographic landscape, the successes of a few can hold lessons that are increasingly important for struggling peer institutions.

And in a year when affordability and cost transparency are more important than ever, regional public institutions may have benefited from their clear and competitive pricing.

“With the decline in the public’s trust of higher education and an increasing concern about the value of a college degree, lower-priced, closer-to-home institutions will likely continue to see a positive impact on enrollment,” Massa said. “If regional publics can leverage that with program success and becoming more efficient in recruiting, all of those things can help them gain an advantage.”

Temple University

On paper, Temple’s enrollment numbers are the biggest success story of the fall: a whopping 30 percent increase in first-year students over last year, and a 29 percent boost in transfers.

The state-affiliated university in North Philadelphia has weathered serious enrollment challenges since the pandemic; last fall enrollment dropped by 9 percent, and cumulatively it was 22 percent below 2019 levels, leading to campuswide concerns about budget cuts. The big boost this fall helps Temple dig itself out of that hole.

Jose Aviles, Temple’s vice provost for enrollment management, oversaw a lot of that digging. He joined Temple from Louisiana State University in March 2023 and worked to refocus its recruitment and marketing strategies. Travel by admissions officers increased by 90 percent last year, and in-person campus visits increased by 80 percent, part of a concerted effort to pursue high-contact relationships with prospective students.

“As much stock has been put into new ways of recruiting students, like social media and video outreach, the reality is that the most important thing is to go back to the tried-and-true methods: getting out on the road, having conversations with students, being clear about your message, making sure that you follow up,” Aviles told Inside Higher Ed.

Perhaps most importantly, Aviles said, Temple doubled down on its history of racial diversity, taking advantage of a post–affirmative action environment in which students of color were increasingly looking for belonging along with a quality education. Temple’s incoming class this fall is 62 percent students of color, its highest ever proportion, and the share of Black students in the Class of 2028—29 percent—is nearly double last year’s. Officials also enhanced their outreach to students from the greater Philadelphia area, increasing the number of local first-years by 68 percent over last year.

“The pipeline is greatly diversifying year by year, and it’s happening incredibly fast,” Aviles said. “Doing this expanded outreach this year was necessary more than ever to meet the moment.”

Youngstown State University

Youngstown State started the year on shaky footing, eliminating five academic programs and 13 faculty positions in January in order to make up for a mounting budget shortfall that stemmed partially from years of declining enrollment.

This fall the university seems to have begun a much-needed recovery. Overall enrollment is up by more than 10 percent, including a 13 percent boost in first-year undergraduates, a 25 percent rise in out-of-state students and a 44 percent increase in international students. Transfer enrollments are up a whopping 106 percent.

University president Bill Johnson wrote in a statement that the surge reflected Youngstown’s continued role as the “anchor institution in Northeast Ohio,” while also emphasizing its gains in out-of-state and international students.

Massa said part of Youngstown’s success appears to be in converting dual-enrolled high schoolers into degree-seeking undergraduates, a strategy that more four-year regional publics are investing in as dual enrollment buoys community college recoveries post-pandemic.

“We’ll see more of this throughout the country, but they had a big surge in the number of students who had been dual enrolled in high school and ended up matriculating,” he said. “They took advantage of that, and it’s impressive.”

Washington State University Tri-Cities

Washington is another state facing demographic challenges and plummeting college-going rates, and its six-campus public university system is still in the trenches; overall system enrollment is down 3 percent this fall.

But at the Tri-Cities campus in Richland, overall undergraduate enrollment is up 5 percent and first-year enrollment is up 16 percent, marking its largest ever freshman class and bucking the regional trend.

Much like at Temple, Tri-Cities admissions director Jamie Owens attributed the jump largely to new in-person recruitment initiatives with local high schoolers and a targeted investment in communicating with prospective families around the FAFSA fiasco.

“Our team worked very hard this past year to deliver financial aid information to our incoming students as quickly as possible,” Owens wrote in a statement.

Vermont State University

After a challenging first year of leadership turnover and shrinking head counts, the fresh-faced institution—the product of a 2022 merger of Vermont’s three public four-year state universities—bounced back this fall. First-year enrollment rose by 14 percent, almost as much as it fell last year, and overall enrollment is up 6 percent.

Maurice Ouimet, VTSU’s vice president for admissions and enrollment services, said he anticipated things would get worse before they got better. But he chalked up the university’s surprisingly fast recovery in one of the most demographically challenged states to a successful recruitment campaign outside of Vermont—and to the branding benefits of consolidation.

“Convincing students to attend has been much easier [since the merger],” he told Inside Higher Ed. “Vermont has a real appeal to certain kinds of applicants, and that cachet is a lot more powerful when it’s in the name.”

Austin Peay State University

Austin Peay in Clarksville, Tenn., was the state’s fastest-growing university this fall. Enrollment surged by 8.2 percent over all—double the growth of Tennessee Tech—and followed on the heels of an overall 7 percent increase last year. Much of that growth came from graduate enrollment, which rose by 13 percent, while undergraduate enrollment climbed 7.2 percent over last year.

Austin Peay’s graduate enrollment has grown by 66 percent since 2016, which could portend a larger investment in graduate degree programs among regional public institutions, Massa said, especially as graduate programs begin to drive international student enrollment.

University of Texas at San Antonio

Regular enrollment growth is less surprising at UT San Antonio, a primarily Hispanic-serving institution in a state with a fast-growing Hispanic youth population, where first-year enrollment rose by 3 percent this fall.

Forty-nine percent of UTSA’s overall enrollment and 43 percent of its first-year enrollment this fall were from Bexar County, where San Antonio is the county seat. Massa said UTSA’s local commitment is something that other regional institutions in demographically changing areas can learn from.

But UTSA’s most notable enrollment increase came from online programs, which grew by 14 percent over last fall. Moreover, 94 percent of online students are Texas residents, and 78 percent are over 23 years old.

Massa said that for regional institutions operating in urban areas in particular, creating and promoting new online programs can significantly boost enrollment of local nontraditional students, and, contrary to common wisdom, can turn out to be good investments for universities without much of an out-of-state market.