In this presentation, Gary Stocker of College Viability examines IPEDS enrollment data from 2014‑2021 for private colleges in a selection of high‑risk Midwest and Northeast states. He shows that across the states examined, far more institutions experienced enrollment declines than growth. Specific state‑level counts are given: Iowa (6 increases, 20 decreases out of 26 colleges), Pennsylvania (22 increases, 50 decreases), Michigan (7 increases, 20 decreases), and Missouri (12 increases, 13 decreases). He then drills down into individual colleges, highlighting Illinois institutions such as St. Augustine, Benedictine, McKendree, Eureka, and Blackburn that suffered notable percentage drops, and similarly points to Pennsylvania schools with both significant gains and losses. Throughout, he emphasizes the disturbing nature of these trends. The talk concludes with an announcement of upcoming versions of the College Viability app—including an executive analysis version—and an invitation to join a mailing list via collegeviability.com for future updates.
Chapters
This is Gary Stocker from College Viability. I wanted to follow up on a LinkedIn post from last night where I referenced some early work I've done while developing the 2023 version of the College Viability app of some of the decrease and increased enrollment in high-risk states across the Midwest and Northeast. And as you can see on the table here, I grabbed just a handful of high-risk states. You can see them here. And I looked at increased enrollment and decreased enrollment, and the patterns are disturbing for a couple of reasons. Let's look at Iowa. The pattern is the same across all of them. Across from the time period of 2014 through 2021, which is the most recent data available from IPEDS, Iowa has had, of the 26 colleges, private colleges in Iowa, 6 had enrollment increases. 20 had enrollment decreases. Let's look at Pennsylvania. 22 with increases, 50 with decreases. This is across 8 years. That's, that's a pattern does make. Michigan, 7 with increased enrollment, 20 with decreased. The only one with a modicum of success was Missouri, where 12 had increased FTE enrollment, student enrollment, and 13 had decreased. Let's go ahead then and look at some specific examples. And I brought up Illinois, and I'm going to go ahead and highlight some of the states, some of the changes here. So these are the colleges from Illinois, and all of them, there are 39 in total. And let's look at the percent change, and let's just grab the first couple handfuls here. And we can see that colleges like St. Augustine, Benedictine, and you can see the list on your own, McKendree, um, Eureka, Blackburn, have had significant decreases as a percentage, Blackburn, as a percentage of the changes in enrollment. Let's go back and look at another state. Let's go look at, for example, at Pennsylvania. Same kind of pattern is going to be observed when I grab Pennsylvania. And I'm just looking at enrollment today. And again, we can see the set of colleges in Pennsylvania with substantial percent decreases in enrollment. We can actually look at the absolute numbers as well. Let me sort this by changes. So there have certainly been some who've done— who've had some noteworthy growth. You can see the list here. I'll highlight that so you can see the list. Some have had some decent growth, both in terms of absolute number and percentage growth. But when I change that and look at those with decreases, we're going to see some disturbing numbers. And again, let me highlight those. And these are colleges with significant decrease in growth— decreases, period— in enrollment over that period. I'm going to continue to develop the parents version of the College Viability App. I've got an executive analysis version of the College Viability Apps and some other smaller versions that I'll be releasing later during the month of January. If you have some interest, go to College Viability— go to the website at collegeviability.com. There's a place for you to click on a link and get on my mailing list, and I'll make sure to send these updates to you as they're completed later this month. This is Gary Stocker with College Viability.
