Pulling Down the List

A couple of weeks ago, I discovered this great article from Sarah Torres Lugo and Sarah Pingel, “Dueling Institutions: Intentionally Supporting Public Research and Regional Universities Amid Declining Enrollment.” in the latest issue of Change Magazine.

It reminded me of so many challenges I faced when working as a leader in a comprehensive regional public university here in Massachusetts. As the authors point out, and as I experienced first-hand (!), too often public research universities compete with regional universities for enrollments. In recent years, this competition has increased due to demographic shifts and changing perceptions related to the value of higher education. As Inside Higher Ed readers know, in the U.S., we are currently experiencing national declines in college enrollment due to the impacts of both the demographic cliff (there are fewer 18-year-olds in the pipeline) and the demand cliff (the percentage of high school graduates immediately enrolling in college after graduation is also declining). These declines are hitting some of our public regional institutions the hardest.

Historically, public research universities and public regional colleges and universities have had distinct missions that minimized the competition. Guidance counselors in high schools also knew that, depending on a student’s GPA, they would guide them to apply to certain institutions. Way back when I attended high school in Michigan, college-bound juniors and seniors knew the GPA cut offs for University of Michigan, Michigan State, and Central Michigan.

Lugo, Pingel, and the team of researchers from the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems (NCHEMS) found that, nationally, “the share of students from underrepresented minority groups has decreased in public research institutions, while it has increased in public regional institutions.” For me, this raises so many questions, one of which is related to the shifts within the public education systems in the states. A telling quote from one university leader really highlights this shifting landscape:

“[The state flagship] just pulls further down their list, and our [regional university] enrollment declines.”

The practice of having a “list” is one I’d love to see made more transparent. Those of us who have worked in admissions or enrollment management know that most of our institutions have their own lists of accepted and waitlisted students. When the use of these lists is at an institutional level, pulling down the list does look like one historically more selective institution cannibalizing enrollments from another historically less selective institution. Research universities go further down their lists to pull enrollments from comprehensive regionals that try to pull from community colleges that are making up for lost enrollments with dually enrolled high school students. In the fall of 2023, 20 percent of community college enrollments were these dual enrollments.

To explore this further, the authors look at the state’s role in supporting public institutions’ responses to shifts in enrollment. For me, this raises the following questions: What if there was a state-level strategy and these different segments of the public education system worked together? What would it look like if research universities, comprehensive regional universities/colleges, community colleges, and public PK-12 systems were parts of an overarching strategy to educate the people who live in the state?

My colleague, Josh Goodman, has written about some of the unintended consequences states face when they do not coordinate across these different segments. At the time, he was writing about the possibility that making community college free might prevent students from attending a four-year institution. For Lugo and Pingel, this lack of coordination might look like diverting students from a comprehensive regional or research university in the public system to a community college in the same state system.

While I hope that most of us would agree that making community colleges free is a good thing, we would probably also agree that it makes sense to coordinate across segments. Over 31 states currently provide some version of free community college and these programs seem to be growing. The comprehensive regional universities seem to be caught between research universities pulling further down their lists and states increasingly moving toward making community college free. Lugo and Pingel’s research shows an upward trend in enrollment in public research universities and a downward trend in enrollment in public comprehensive regional universities and colleges.

Comprehensive regional universities and colleges play an important role in the education landscape in our states. According to Forbes, “regional public universities educate 70 [percent] of all students who attend public four-year institutions.” These institutions are more likely to enroll in-state students, the students are more likely to come from lower-income backgrounds and historically underserved racial groups relative to public research universities, and these institutions prepare the overwhelming majority of our teachers and nurses.

Lugo and Pingel end with questions for state leaders, including the following:

What kinds of collaborations between institutions might support state priorities and how can the state and/or system incentivize such collaborations?

I would add that this analysis should also include the PK-12 system, especially as community colleges increasingly include dually enrolled high school students as a major portion of their enrollments. We need to ask ourselves:

What makes sense for the state rather than what makes sense for a single university or college?

If you have time, I recommend reading the full article.