College Viability's 2023 Top-Bottom report for Michigan PUBLIC Colleges and Universities

It's time for this week's College Viability 2023 Top Bottom Report, the public 4-year college reports for Michigan. So this has been the big game weekend where Michigan disposed of Ohio State on the football field. I'm assuming the many, many University of Michigan fans are pleased. So I thought, why not compare Michigan's football skills with their capacity to educate, educate their citizenry? And so we have Michigan. So this week's College Viability Top Bottom Report is brought to you by the football-producing state of Michigan. And we'll look at the fields that you see in the middle— FTE enrollment, 4-year graduation rates, and on. My name is Gary Stocker, and we look at a handful or so of fields. So let's go ahead and take a look at total enrollment. And again, the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, the football team's place, uh, has grown well. And you can see they have grown over 5,600 students from 2014 to 2021. This data, of course, is from the National Center for Education Statistics and its IPEDS databases from the years 2014 to 2021. And we see the 8-year change in that second to right column, second from the left, second from the right column on the far side of the image. And we also have some percent changes. We have some conditional formatting that you see. Green is good. There are no yellows for eh, okay. And you can see some are not good. But here's what I want to point out. At the top 5, FTE, and FTE is full-time equivalent enrollment. It's the tool we use mostly because it provides a standardized comparison. Is up for only, it says 3, Michigan Technological University was up 7 students over 8 years, I'll give them that, 3 of the top 5 had some enrollment growth, only the University of Michigan was really strong. But the bottom 2 in the top 5, Dearborn and Bay Mills, I don't know how Bay Mills Community College got in there, have been down, all right? Let's take it and look at the bottom. The bottom set, of public colleges in the state of Michigan and their FTE enrollment. You can see the 8-year change column on the far right. Look how much they've dropped. Across the board, substantial drops. You can see the conditional formatting colors were red for all of them, and you can see the percent change over those 8 years. It's not good. And we see cutbacks. I, I can't remember all the stories. I believe I've seen stories from Western Michigan and Central Michigan there will be cutbacks. These colleges aren't going to close. When we do our top-bottom reports on private colleges, some of them are going to close. But we already see across the country small, medium, and large-sized public colleges cutting back on programs, cutting back on majors, cutting back on faculty and staff. So if one of these colleges is on your child's or your own list, you want to take a look at their enrollment. Over the past 5, 6 years in the major you're thinking about. Because if that major is particularly weak at that college, you run the risk of the college deciding to cut that program. Now, they may or may not let you finish the degree if you started it, but that's just one of the heads-up you want to look at for programs that are either growing— that's good— or programs that are not growing. Let's move on to another quick list: total enrollment, I put this on here as total enrollment. If a student takes 3 credits and one student takes 15 credits, they're counted the same, unlike the FTE where there's some inside baseball stuff going on. And again, we see the same pattern. The football team has good growth numbers, nobody else does. We look at the bottom, and again, you can see the patterns for yourself that your changes are substantially decreasing across 8 years for the 4 here. I will point out there are 21 public colleges listed in the IPEDS database for the state of Michigan. Let's move on and let's take a look at entering undergraduates. And this is kind of the traditional fall freshman class. You can see the numbers on the far right-hand side for yourself. Looks like I've got more than 5 on this one, and top 3 have some growth in new freshmen— new undergrads, I guess, is more accurate. But even the top list has 4 with decreasing enrollment. And you know what you're going to see in the bottom list? You're going to see substantial decreases across the board. You can see the colleges on the left and their decreases in the kind of the golden shaded section on the far right, and their percent change and conditional formatting on the red. Not good. And it's not just Michigan. I think last week we did Illinois, we saw the same pattern. Folks, we're in the midst of something. It's not good in terms of college student enrollment growth. I think in a couple years we're gonna look back and say, hey, we were in the middle of a catastrophic change in how higher education is perceived and attended in this country, and this data supports that. Let's look at 4-year graduation rates. I've said it before and I'll say it 1,000 times more, this is the hidden tragedy in American higher education. Let's look at the 4-year graduation rate, the top set of colleges in Michigan. And we can see that the 4-year graduation, I got the wrong one here, the 4-year graduation rate, the top colleges, and we're gonna focus on 2021 here. And the threshold that we have here at college viability is a 4-year undergrad graduation rate should be 50% or higher. And you can see Michigan, Ann Arbor is at 81%, I don't think Northwestern Michigan College knows what they're doing. They're all over the place. I don't consider that valid data. And Michigan State University, the two big state schools, if you will, are doing all right. But again, in the top list, the bottom four don't even hit 50%. And again, if you've heard me talk about this before, we call those coin toss colleges because you're just as likely to get a degree by tossing a coin in the air and calling heads or tails as you are going to one of these colleges and graduating in 4 years. And the bottom of the list, you can look at that on your own. It begs the question, and it begs the question regularly, what are colleges like Lake Superior State, and all the way down at the bottom, Saginaw Valley and University of Michigan in Flint, graduating 12 out of every 100 students who started 4 years ago at Flint, and only 30 out of Lake Superior State University, So those who started in 2017 or '18, only 30 out of every 100 graduated. What are we doing? I know what we're doing. We're accepting students who aren't prepared for college. I do believe, and I've shared this in previous podcasts, that there is an issue with high schools way beyond the scope of today's discussion, but it's a topic I want to touch on in future episodes of This Week in College Viability. But look at the numbers. It suggests these colleges don't either have an intellectually proper student body or the systems and processes in place to get those college students to graduation. Percent admitted is just a reflection of selectivity. If you've heard me talk before, anything, any college with a number above, say, 80, 85%, probably have an informal motto of have, heart beat, will admit. They're trying to get students to meet their budget requirements, to meet their revenue requirements, and it's certainly the high percentage admitted reflects also in the low percent of those graduating in 4 years. And then it's a little bit different on percent admitted. I'm gonna jump down to the University of Michigan. They admit 20% out of every 100. They do that on purpose. The University of Michigan is a very selective, some places, some people call them restrictive, rejective, excuse me, some people call them rejective colleges, because they're very picky. And yet they're very picky accepting only 2 out of every 10, 20 out of every 100 students, and yet their enrollment grows. I wonder why the state of Michigan doesn't engage the folks at the football school to run the colleges elsewhere to get the graduation rates up. Again, a question for another podcast down the road. And then finally, we wanna take a look at retention. The students who start and continue, and again, look at this, exceptional numbers for both the University of Michigan football team and in Ann Arbor, and Michigan State University, and really the others in this top list do well. Those students who start tend to continue. I'm gonna give Northwestern Michigan College some credit here. They're relatively consistent across the board. You don't like to see big jumps from year to year, We'll give them that one. And then finally, retention full-time, the bottom list. We can see that 8 out of 10, all the way down to 7 out of 10. Make your own judgment for the colleges you see on the left and those 8-year patterns for retention numbers that you see. And again, it's a pattern. I can't tell whether Oakland University is gonna cut programs or not. I can tell you if their enrollment is changing. I can tell you what their graduation rates are for both 4 and 6 years, even though we just had the 4-year rates here. When we look at the data, we are in the Moneyball era. We can look at data to make determinations whether this is the kind of college where we want our students, either ourselves or our children, to go. And so what can you do with these data comparisons? And just like the state of Illinois last week, there is one dominant successful public college in Michigan, and that's the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Michigan State's not far behind. And the others don't compare favorably across hardly any of the IPEDS data reports that I just shared. So bottom line, as a student or a parent, focus on the stronger public Michigan colleges. And those colleges that are consistently in the bottom, should only be considered with aggressive questioning, a lot of whys. Why is your enrollment trend down? Why is your graduation rate so low? Why do you accept such a high percentage of students? It's really that the old line of caveat emptor, the Latin line caveat emptor, let the buyer beware, in those situations where colleges you see consistently are in the bottom list, I can make the case, bad history, is bad future. If you have specific questions about the top-to-bottom reports, or you would like to get a state or a college, either public or private, on my top-to-bottom list comparisons, drop me a note at gary@collegeviability.com. I'll provide you links to get these updates sent to your inbox, and I'll also provide you links to purchase appropriate copies of the College Viability app for students and families, faculty, staff, And for College Leaders, this is Gary Stocker with the November 26th edition of the Top to Bottom Report, brought to you by the State of Michigan and their really good football team. Mm-hmm.