Gary Stocker analyzes 36 New York public community colleges using eight years of enrollment and spending data. Only one showed FTE growth while others declined; instruction costs per student doubled at many campuses despite falling enrollment. Retention rates range from low-60s at top performers to 50% or below at the bottom.
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Hey, it's time for another Top and Bottom College Report, where we look at the top-performing and bottom-performing colleges across the country. This week we're going to this great state of New York, and we're looking at community colleges, and I'll tell you why in a minute. Hi, My name is Gary Stocker with College Viability, and one of the many pieces of content we provide is we give listeners and viewers a chance to look at the top-performing and bottom-performing colleges in certain states. Sometimes we do more than one state at a time, and today we're going to look at the 30-some-odd community colleges, public community colleges, in the state of New York. And you can see the fields we're going to compare It's a little bit different than what we do with the 4-year colleges. There's just different data reported through the National Center for Education Statistics, and it's IPEDS database, and of course we're still using the 2014 through 2021 data, eagerly awaiting for the 2022 data to be posted so we can add those updates in coming podcasts and broadcasts. So why are we doing community colleges? Well, last week there was a story, a couple stories, one out of thecity.nyc, and TimesUnion.com in the state of New York reporting some accreditation issues with some set of community colleges in New York. And you can see the set right here. And you're going to note that many of them show up in both the top and the bottom reports that I'm going to share. And as always, let's go ahead and get to the reports and let's look at the top FTE enrollment. And those that watch and listen to these broadcasts regularly know that we prefer the FTE enrollment. It's a nice standardized way of comparing enrollment. What's fascinating about this is in New York, in the community colleges, the 8-year changes, and you can see I have that highlighted for you, only one, only one college has, community college has positive enrollment growth, FTE enrollment growth, over the past 8 reported years. This is a small community college. But the other top 10 are all negative. So what do you think what happens when we go to the bottom 10? Look at the numbers. Look at the numbers. This is an easy observation, an easy declaration that the citizens of New York are abandoning their community colleges. Why is somebody else's discussion, is somebody else's decision. But clearly the market is saying, "Hey, we're not interested in these community colleges." And we'll look at the total enrollment. And there, you know, I don't often use this one. I'm using it now because it shows all the students who enroll in the college, whether they take 1 3-credit course or 5 3-credit courses. And the numbers are always a little bit higher here. You see that with CUNY, Stella and Charles Guttman, a little bit higher. But again, the pattern holds. 1 positive, Stella and Guttman, Stella and Charles Guttman. The rest are all negative. Same thing on the bottom. So it doesn't matter whether we're using a standardized enrollment comparison, the FTE version, or the total enrollment which counts everybody no matter how many credits they're taking. It's a negative number. The market is speaking. And I'm not familiar with all of the giveaways and incentives that the state of New York has for community college, but clearly in the last 8 years it ain't working. It's not working in the state of New York. Let's look at expenses, and I don't often do this one, but I want to make the point that even in the face of massively, massively decreasing enrollment, instruction expenses, and you'll see institutional expenses here in a second, are going up. You can call that good, it probably is, but look how much it's gone up. Just take the first one, Bronx Community. From $8,000 to over $16,000, more than doubled in 8 years. Good thing, bad thing, you decide. I provide the data that lets you make the comparisons because when we go to the bottom 10 in instruction expense per student, you know, one is positive, all right, that's couch money over the course of 8 years. And some community colleges have lowered the amount of money they spend per student, per student FTE, for instruction. Good thing, bad thing, you make the decision. But the observation is some colleges are spending less and some colleges are spending more. Let's jump then to retention before we look at institutional expenses. And retention, all right, I will grant a low to mid-60 number is marginally acceptable. On the 4-year college side, you'll typically, not typically, but you'll see retention numbers in the 70+ with some frequency, not that often. And just, it means that for every 100 students starting at Nassau Community College in New York, 64 show up for year 2 or graduate. I'm not sure how they define that. Only 64 out of 100. And you know what's going to happen when we go to the bottom? Coin toss. These are all coin toss colleges where 50% or less the students come back for the second year or graduate. And even the trends, the trends are lower. It used to be a little bit better, but look at Stella and Gutman. They were our top, so to speak, enrollment increase, but their retention has gone down more than 20 points. Again, make the decisions that you need to based on the data, but look at the comparisons, look at the trends. And then let's go to institutional expense. And the best way to describe this is the amount of money that a college, in this case these community colleges, spend per student on administrative costs. Non-faculty costs, the president, the provost, the department heads, the managers, the IT folks, the maintenance folks, per student. And again, you can see that in the top, whether it's good or not, the set of colleges, top 10 community colleges in New York, and what the change has been. You can see I've highlighted over here on the right-hand side, it's gone up. And in the case of Dutchess Community College, and that was on our list of colleges with community, with, um, issues with their creditor, Dutchess Community College has more than doubled Yeah, more than doubled their expenses, institutional expenses. They're hiring folks that aren't teaching. I don't know what they're doing, but it's more than doubled. Compare that with somebody on the bottom of the list, and the folks at, most of them are still going up, which, all right, I will grant that's not a big deal, but some go up a lot less. SUNY Corning is up 17%. Dutchess is up 136%. You tell me, ask the good folks at Dutchess why their enrollment, excuse me, why their institutional expenses have gone up so much in comparison to the ones that you see here on the bottom list. And so what do we make of this? There are 36 public community colleges in New York State. I posted the the top and bottom 10 for each of those reporting fields. And as I share with all of these top and bottom reports on college performance, as a student or parent, you wanna focus on those limited number of, it says private New York colleges, that's not right, public New York community colleges with increased enrollment, that was one, or those with less decreases in enrollment. That's not a good thing. And those that you see at the bottom of the list should be considered only with aggressive questioning, just like I share with the 4 years. You know, let the buyer beware. If a college has had decreasing enrollment over 8 years, substantial decreasing enrollment over 8 years, it's not going to turn around tomorrow. It's not going to turn around this week or this month or even this year. And if the enrollment goes down, at some point the good folks in the New York community college system are going to have to start cutting back on things, and maybe they already are. If you have questions about this particular top/bottom report, or you want to see some more fields, you have a specific state, type of college, drop me a note at gary@collegeviability— that's one word— gary@collegeviability.com. And I post these every weekend, and I will do so again the coming weekend. And we'll look forward to sharing top-bottom reports next week for another state and another set of colleges. This is Gary Stocker with College Viability.
