UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – Penn State’s Board of Trustees heard an overview of ongoing research into providing accessible and affordable education to an increasingly diverse population during a committee meeting Oct. 19.
The board’s Committee on Equity and Human Resources received updates on enrollment trends from Matt Melvin, vice president for enrollment management, and Marcus Whitehurst, vice provost for educational equity. The presentation covered current trends and future projections for enrollment nationally and at the University.
Currently, college enrollment across the country is facing potential declines due to lower birth rates, educational gaps from the COVID-19 pandemic, and changing understandings on the value of higher education, Melvin said.
“More and more students of today, in high school, have options. They can go into the labor force and, frankly, start making some decent money,” Melvin said. “I think there’s increasing scrutiny about the value of higher education, particularly related to cost, debt, return on investment. I think it’s going to be incumbent on us to document educational outcomes.”
Those outcomes, such as higher salary and better marketability, are particularly impactful with students from underrepresented backgrounds or low-income families, Melvin said, according to Penn State’s recent Admitted Students Review. And that population is projected to grow — analysis from the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) shows high school graduating classes, both nationally and in the state, will be increasingly diverse with fairly dramatic growth projected in the number of Hispanic and multi-racial students.
Documenting the outcomes of a college education can help to appeal to students and bring them to Penn State, Melvin said. Parental education level also influences college enrollment, he said, and Penn State’s large alumni base and appeal with families will have sway in deciding whether to go to college – and where to enroll.
Melvin also noted that demographic shifts are predicted to vary across the country. Current estimates from WICHE predict that by 2030, 60% of high school graduates will reside in one of 10 states. That list includes Pennsylvania — a fact that may lend Penn State an advantage.
Penn State, as part of a continual effort to stay abreast with best practices, is working to implement new enrollment analytics practices, Melvin said. That includes focusing state-by-state recruitment efforts using data such as these.
Whitehurst said Penn State always is looking at successes seen by peers in higher education where recruitment and retention of students, particularly those from low-income and underrepresented backgrounds, are concerned. Leaders also are constantly evaluating existing programs and are actively considering strategies to invest more in programs that show success.
At Penn State and other institutions, Whitehurst said high-impact learning experiences like study abroad, undergraduate research, internships and service-learning programs help to feed into strong enrollment and retention.
Some initiatives, such as Penn State’s comprehensive studies program, offer a retention adviser and specialized seminar courses, among other benefits. But from a resource perspective, those smaller and more dedicated programs are difficult to expand out to bigger groups, he said, and ways to expand their benefits still need to be examined.
Whitehurst added that, while the current process for students to transition from a Commonwealth Campus to University Park is streamlined to ease the process and provide support, more can be done to aid students who are transferring to Penn State from another institution. By making the transfer process simpler, he said, the University can continue to grow and meet the demands of the market.
An additional effort that will benefit Penn State is continuing to emphasize the financial and educational benefits of the Commonwealth Campuses. There is a Penn State campus within 30 miles of 96% of Pennsylvania residents, Melvin said, and those campuses provide access to exceptional educational opportunities for high school graduates.
Penn State’s Commonwealth Campuses are embedded into their local communities and are more flexible and adaptable to the educational needs in the area, he said, including lower-income and underrepresented groups. They also are adept at helping to meet the workforce needs of local business and industry, he said.
Beyond the initial enrollment of high school graduates, Melvin said, there needs to be a continued focus on retention of students within Penn State. In part, that’s being done through analyses of student performance across their years with the University.
Rather than strictly focusing on whether someone stays with Penn State, Melvin said, the University can analyze what classes they performed well in, which classes they dropped, and begin to assess ways the institution can shift and adapt to ensure students’ initial academic success and continuous academic progress toward completion of a Penn State degree.
“We’re building out this notion of progression. What is consistently the most significant predictor of likelihood to graduate is academic progress in the first semester or first year – both grades and credits earned – since those are the metrics that reflect early progress toward degree. Retention without progression is the worst-case scenario. So we’ve got to start looking at how students are moving through the system,” Melvin said. “Our aspiration is not to retain students. Our aspiration is to graduate students. And in order to do that, we have to look at whether students are making satisfactory progress toward degree completion over their years of college.”
Emphasizing academic progress rather than just graduation rates can allow for more strategic distribution of resources, Melvin said. The enrollment analytics area is expanding to include those factors, he said, and consider how they impact retention and graduation rates.