Higher Education Enrollment Growth Briefing

This is your final Enrollment Growth Briefing from Helix Education. I'm Eric Olsen. And I'm so excited to share that Helix Education is now a part of RNL, the leading provider of higher education enrollment management, student success, and fundraising solutions. We've loved learning with you over these past 1,100 episodes. 1,100. Oh my goodness. What a crazy number. These daily enrollment growth devotionals have been such an amazing reminder to me of all of the innovation and passion happening all across the country. Thank you for listening, and thank you for your role in being those people, building such beautiful experiences for our students. So find me on LinkedIn (@ericolsencreative) and drop me a line to say hello if you've enjoyed the show. And then head on over to RNL.com. They have an amazing resources section with great blogs, webinars, and interviews. So while this show may be ending, the learning won't stop. And may you forever continue to fight the good enrollment growth fight at your institution.

Reported by Inside Higher Ed, with COVID funds from the American Rescue Plan helping keep higher ed's finances afloat during the down enrollment years of the pandemic, 65% of Chief Business Officers believe their institutions will be financially stable over the next decade.

Reported by Inside Higher Ed, in 2021, only 51% of students attending law school online rated their programs as either “excellent” or “good”. Just one year later, this number has jumped to 72%, narrowing the gap between in-person satisfaction, currently at 78%, up from 76% over the same time period.

Reported by EdSurge, new virtual reality games suggest that we're only scratching the surface as to what immersive education will allow us to teach. For instance, Shakespeare-VR out of Carnegie Mellon University is based out of the premise that Shakespeare is meant to be performed, and merely reading the lines in a classroom doesn't fully help students understand the art form of Shakespeare's work.

Reported by Inside Higher Ed, as our institutions start paying more attention to our personal carbon footprint, there is an ethical case to be made for the benefits of online education. In fact, The University of Michigan Dearborn reported a $570,000 cost savings from utilities during the first year of the pandemic alone.

Reported by Higher Ed Dive, a new study from the Student Experience Project showed that students' self-assessment of their learning experience rose 10.5% when in classrooms where faculty had been trained to help promote social belonging in the classroom.

Reported by Higher Ed Dive, the next generation of this concept has begun, with the acquisition of University of Antelope Island in California, whose physical campus will be digitally replicated to become a metaversity for their online student population.

Reported by Higher Ed Dive, Utahns Against Hunger surveyed nearly 5,700 students for this report, which also shows that this food insecurity disproportionately affected students of color, with nearly half experiencing food insecurity.

Reported by Inside Higher Ed, with half of all confirmed monkeypox cases in the U.S. having been reported in the past two weeks, it is becoming increasingly likely that our institutions will have to deal with both Monkeypox and COVID protocols when students return this fall.

Reported by Inside Higher Ed, with tenure-track faculty options falling dramatically across the board, Brandeis is evolving their curriculum to make sure their graduates have solid postdoctoral opportunity pathways. This includes funding both on- and off-campus internships to help students diversify their experiences.

Reported by Inside Higher Ed, while Bowdoin College was one of the first to adopt test-optional admissions back in 1969, it is now one of the first to provide a need-blind admissions process to international students. A 57.4% return on their endowment investments in 2021, bringing their total endowment to $2.72 billion dollars, may have been a driving force behind this decision.

Reported by Inside Higher Ed, a Bay View Analytics survey shows that 22% of courses in Spring 2022 required the use of open educational resources while only 33% of faculty now believe that “students learn better from print materials”.

Reported by Higher Ed Dive, as Congress is determining whether or not to allow Pell Grants to cover short-term academic programs, specifically those that lead to a postsecondary credential, online-only programs are currently absent from consideration.

Reported by Higher Ed Dive, a common explanation here is that the rise in Asian-American discrimination during COVID has made these students more hesitant to join our academic communities. Although, while a whopping 59% of this population chooses 2-year institutions in California, their enrollment numbers at four-year institutions remains largely unchanged.

Reported by Inside Higher Ed, while saying you're open to remote work is one thing, actually being able to hire employees from all 50 states is a much heavier tax and accounting lift.

Reported by Inside Higher Ed, a number of colleges are experimenting with direct admit admissions policies, including a broad program in Minnesota where 50 high schools will be participating in a direct admit system in partnership with 40 colleges who can set up their own GPA qualifier at which any participating students will be directly admitted into the respective institutions.

Reported by Higher Ed Dive, RealPage analytics data shows that new student housing planned builds look to be down about 50% this fall compared to the pace seen back in the 2010s. While slow enrollment growth has slowed the need for net-new housing, the problem is that alternative off-campus housing rents have skyrocketed over the past couple years with the change in the housing market.

Reported by Edsurge, Coursera's large student base makes A/B testing extraordinarily interesting to learn quickly from at a high level of statistically significant confidence. New research shows that one of the more interesting A/B testing success stories is in regards to prompting.

Reported by EdSurge, Meta (Facebook), is currently running television ads promising the future of education in a virtual, immersive environment. The question is, why?

Reported by Inside Higher Ed, while more than half of respondents to an NPR and Ipsos poll suggested support for President Biden's partial debt forgiveness plan, a full 82% believe the focus should be on making college more affordable, not merely subsidizing its debt at the end of the line. But what would this look like?

Reported by Higher Ed Dive, these institutions, including Columbia University, will be unlisted in the 2022 rankings for accusations of misreporting data. This comes recently after a business school dean at Temple University was sentenced to 14 months in prison for similarly falsifying data submitted to U.S. News.

Reported by Higher Ed Dive, the birth rate decline since the 2008 recession is going to start showing up in our 2025 entering classes. But will this 15% decline be an inevitability for all institutions, or hit some harder than others? Specifically in Connecticut, where population growth already ranked 48th out of 50 states, institutions like Western Connecticut State University are using big data modeling to find new pockets of students their prior enrollment marketing targeting would have ignored.

Reported by Inside Higher Ed, while Purdue cites technical constraints with its new financial processing vendor as the reason for the pause of their Back a Boiler ISA program, pausing may suggest internal dissatisfaction with the program to date.

Reported by Inside Higher Ed, the whole “you know potential employers can see that, right?” prompt that we give our students to help them understand the reputational downside of being too “authentic” on your social media platforms? It might not be a problem any more. Companies like Filtari promise to scan and suggest the removal of any problematic content that might red-flag employers during the hiring process.

Reported by Inside Higher Ed, if you take the 40-year high inflation rate into account, our effective wages for full-time faculty dropped 5% this year. The problem? Most institutions don't have the means or the stomach to dole out 5% raise increases across the board. Of course by not doing so, they run the risk of their most talented employees to try and find greener pastures. That's why Carnegie Mellon University is offering a short-term measure to eligible employees in a one-time $1,500 stipend.

Reported by Higher Ed Dive, a new Coursera report that tracks skills proficiency by country shows that U.S. tech skills dropped from 69% to 43% year-over-year.

Reported by The Hechinger Report, with so many employers beginning to quietly remove the bachelor's degree requirement from their job listings, this begs the question if we'll start to see a different kind of flipped learning in higher ed.

Reported by Higher Ed Dive, a recent study from The Brookings Institution suggests that increased high school graduation rates during the pandemic may have been a result of decreased academic standards during that same time frame. Schools were rightfully being more patient and more understanding of their students during a very difficult time.

Reported by Inside Higher Ed, designed to double the number of engineering graduates coming out of the state and meet Maine's growing STEM workforce requirements, the Maine College of Engineering, Computing, and Information Science will consolidate the system's existing STEM programs under this one statewide institution.

Reported by Inside Higher Ed, New York state is one for instance which requires master's degrees for their teachers. But that means many if not most teachers are entering their careers with a higher level of debt than their entire annual salary.

Reported by Inside Higher Ed, the University of Arkansas System's purchase of for-profit Grantham University for $1 has merged with their existing online university, eVersity, to become the University of Arkansas Grantham, currently serving only 5,500 students, but with the hopes of serving many many more, and solving the problem of so many Arkansas citizens who hold some credit but no credential.

Reported by EdSurge, Facebook continues to experiment and pilot the ability for instructors to teach and monetize courses directly on the Facebook platform. While Outschool appears to be the biggest player/target in this decentralized space on the K12 side, could this gateway into our instructors selling their courses directly on Facebook, albeit without the benefit of being able to provide credit or a credential for the work?

Reported by Higher Ed Dive, streaming media providers are becoming a growing portion of an academic libraries' focus and budget, for documentary, film, music and podcast content for their students.

Reported by Higher Ed Dive, approximately 20% of faculty and staff at Middlebury College in Vermont commute across state lines because they can't afford to live any closer. Across the country, we're seeing this become a bigger and bigger issue. Real estate prices go up, driving individuals further and further away from town center in order to afford the local housing rates.

Reported by ABC News, college discussion forums, including College Confidential and Reddit contain large volumes of discussions suggesting the Roe v. Wade decision may have an impact on a student's college decision.

Reported by Higher Ed Dive, a new report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center highlights a few categories of student types over-indexing on their return vs. the stop-out group.

Reported by Detroit News, Michigan State University alone has fired more than 500 employees, and between MSU and the University of Michigan, more than 2,750 students have had holds placed on their accounts, preventing them from enrolling in future courses until they provide proof of an updated vaccination schedule.

Reported by Inside Higher Ed, SUNY Oswego alumnus Al Roker wrote a letter for prospective students in the communications schools' enrollment sequence. This is part of SUNY Oswego's “everyone's involved” approach to enrollment, which challenges faculty and alumni to be as involved in admissions as the enrollment team themselves.

Reported by Protocol, while Coursera and other microcredential providers have focused hard on hard skills these past few years, Coursera's most recent Global Skills Report shows that U.S. learners have started leaning back to human skills during the pandemic, including resilience, project management, decision-making and storytelling - much more so than other countries. Which begs the question, who's right?

Reported by Inside Higher Ed, 57% of Exclesior Scholarship student families participating in New York State's free college program had an annual household income of $70,000 or greater. Critics of this program believe that this is well-intentioned design that ignored the fact that the very students this program was designed to serve most have nontuition, living, technology, transportation, and childcare costs that may prevent them from being able to participate.

Reported by Evolllution, Sheila Blanc from the University of Calgary believes it's because we still don't have a shared language to talk about our degree credentials, these microcredentials, and how they connect in a broader framework.

Reported by Higher Ed Dive, a recent EducationDynamics report shows online students are younger and more likely to be working full-time than they were five years ago. Now, there's likely a pandemic asterisk on this data for sure, but it also makes sense to believe this trend is likely one that will stick. While online education used to be the format for the working adult going “back” to school, the younger student has realized that online is an amazing opportunity for them to be able to hit the workforce earlier, and learn more flexibly while they earn.

Reported by Inside Higher Ed, higher ed's largest missional failure got larger the last few years, with the number of students dropping out of college before securing their credential raised from 36 million in 2019 to 39 million today.

Reported by Higher Ed Dive, a new report by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce reminds us that while elder millennials didn't reach economic self-sufficiency on average until their early 30s, this is a full half decade later than it took elder boomers to reach that place. However, in their 30s, millennials pulled ahead of the boomers as well. And perhaps this is the most critical issue in our pursuit for clarifying higher education's value. Perhaps it simply doesn't happen fast enough post-graduation.

Reported by Higher Ed Dive, the U.S. Department of Education has been encouraging colleges to use their federal COVID relief funds, some of which are specifically earmarked to be spent on directly assisting students, on mental health resourcing. Pointing to initiatives such as the University of Riverside's 24/7 crisis support, Sinclair Community College's hiring of a social worker and the University of Texas at San Antonio's telehealth expansion, including all-day online counseling for in-need students.

Reported by Inside Higher Ed, many institutions are raising their tuition at the greatest rate since 2008 in response to a current inflation rate of 8.3%. This comes after two years of fairly minor tuition rate increases or even holds during pandemic years and lowered enrollment.

Reported by Higher Ed Dive, for Gen Z students considering graduate school, only 22% of them have raising their earning potential as their top priority. These students are looking for better career alignment. Bigger mission. Better purpose. And a full 45% of these Gen Z prospects want a full-time in-person graduate degree, perhaps looking to experience what they weren't able to,  having graduated from their undergraduate degree in the last couple of years of the pandemic.

Reported by Higher Ed Dive, for the students who started their college or career experience during the pandemic, they may not have the nostalgia for full-time in-person? And we see that preferential difference in the data. With 1 in 4 college leaders stating they don't plan to offer remote class options by 2025, pandemic willing. But at the same time, a full 63% of students surveyed claimed they prefer either an online or hybrid education model.

Reported by Higher Ed Dive, Lowe's employees can now pursue more than 50 degrees and certificate programs from 23 institutions, including University of Arizona, Morehouse College, Paul Quinn College, and North Carolina A&T State University. Lowes will also cover all textbook and course fees for employee participants.

Reported by Higher Ed Dive, an amendment to the Higher Ed Act in 2008 required all institutions to implement Net Price Calculators on their websites, designed to provide a more accurate cost estimate for prospective students. The problem is, the tool is only as powerful as the inputs, which sometimes includes tax information which provides a big friction spot to completion.

Reported by Inside Higher Ed, in response to the state of Maryland finding difficulty filling their talent pipelines, they have removed all degree requirements from thousands of available jobs they no longer feel necessarily should require them.