Trusteeship - November/December 2020 - 15

The demographic cliff
is going to happen, so [the
goal now] is positioning your
institution not just to survive
this crisis, but to really think
about new ways to recruit and
retain to be stronger during the
next crisis, which is only
a few years away.

changed. McAnuff says that they admitted more students from
New Jersey from their waitlist to offset declines in out-of-state and
international students. "Our freshman class is a little below goal
but not severely impacted," he says.
But a greater number of state residents results in less nonresident tuition-a strategy that many public institutions turned
to in an effort to offset cuts to state funding following the 2008
recession.
"Even if you stay level in enrollment, you're not necessarily going
to be level in terms of tuition," said Doug Webber, an economics
professor at Temple University, during a webinar hosted by the
Education Writers Association (EWA) in September. "There certainly is a precipitous decline this year, but this is part of an ongoing
trend. When you have this big drop in these high-paying students,
that's going to put a significant dent in your tuition revenue."
Nathan Grawe, an economics professor at Carleton College,
had previously predicted that the college-going population will
drop by 15 percent between 2025 and 2029. A declining number of
high school graduates has already begun to impact enrollment at
some colleges and universities in the Northeast and Midwest.
Normally, there's an inverse relationship between college enrollment and economic downturn. After the 2008 economic crisis, for
example, higher education institutions experienced an enrollment
spike as people sought to gain new skills and credentials. But that
hasn't necessarily held true in the current context. "This time is
different, because what drives unemployment is a pandemic that
really makes high-contact interactions problematic," Grawe says.
It can be particularly problematic for technical and applied
fields that require hands-on education. Community colleges, for
example, might see both an increase in dual enrollment students
and students who might have traditionally gone to a four-year

SHUTTERSTOCK/ SUPIRAK JAISAN

college and a decrease in students
enrolled in workforce programs.
"We already had a looming
enrollment crisis," Perez says. "The
demographic cliff is going to happen, so [the goal now] is positioning
your institution not just to survive
this crisis, but to really think about
new ways to recruit and retain to be
stronger during the next crisis, which
is only a few years away."
During the EWA webinar, Carlos
E. Santiago, the commissioner of
the Massachusetts Department of
Higher Education, said that his state
has seen closures, mergers, and consolidations of 18 institutions in the
last five years-all prior to COVID19. "If you look at the institutions
that are in the most precarious position, they are generally small
institutions... that are enrollment dependent with small endowments," he said. "We are looking very carefully now at our public
institutions because enrollment has been trending downward
even before COVID-19, [and] state appropriations have not even
returned to the level of the Great Recession. So these institutions
have not caught up financially over that period of time."
Institutions that were already struggling with enrollment "just
don't have the capacity to suffer the short-term losses, which in
part explains the urgency with which we have seen some campuses
respond with reopening plans," Grawe adds.

Declining International Enrollment
Grawe says that declining enrollment of new international students
since 2016 was an early warning for institutions that are heavily
dependent on international enrollment. "We didn't anticipate the
pandemic, but lo and behold, the pandemic is reminding us that
the international student market, while a tremendous growth market historically, should not be taken as a given," he says. "The pandemic is making it clear to us that the international student market
is an important part of our portfolio, but it also brings some risk."
Brad Farnsworth, the vice president of the American Council on
Education (ACE), says that there is broad consensus that there has
been a significant decline in the number of international students
studying in the United States. He is reluctant to cite a number but
says that "we were using 25 percent for a while and that was little
more than an educated guess. I think that is probably low."
The biggest decline is among first-time international students,
Farnsworth says. Many international students who were already
studying in the United States remained in the country after most
campuses shut down in March.
NOV. DEC. 2020 TRUSTEESHIP 15

Trusteeship - November/December 2020

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