Higher ed enrollment remains down post-COVID, including in Iowa

IOWA CITY — Postsecondary enrollment nationally stayed well below pre-COVID levels this spring — down 1.3 million students or 7 percent from 2019 — and Iowa remained among the hardest-hit, with a 13 percent drop in combined community college, private, and public university enrollment over the four years.

That 13 percent tied Iowa for the fifth-largest enrollment drop across those sectors nationally, with Texas reporting the biggest loss at 17 percent, according to new spring enrollment data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.

When looking at Iowa’s public universities only, enrollment in the spring semester that just ended was down 11 percent from spring 2019, the 6th biggest drop nationally. Across Iowa’s private colleges and universities, spring enrollment dropped 9 percent from 2019 — the 11th largest drop.

Although Iowa’s community college enrollment fell 17 percent over the four-year span, 22 states reported bigger drops — including some as high as 38 percent in Colorado and 37 percent in Texas.

“With the pandemic now behind us, a new set of factors appears to be preventing students from returning to campuses,” National Student Clearinghouse Research Center Executive Director Doug Shapiro said. “And these new factors are having a stronger effect on students who are seeking bachelor’s degrees than on associate-seekers.”

For example, he said, undergraduate students seem to be pursuing different types of credentials — with spring enrollment in public and private colleges and universities continuing to show year-over-year losses, while community college enrollment for the first time in years was up this spring.

And while other “sub-baccalaureate credentials” have been experiencing more enrollment interest, graduate-level enrollment saw the biggest year-over-year loss nationally.

“Graduate-level enrollment drops are almost entirely due to losses in master’s programs (down 57,000 students),” according to the research center.

Although freshman enrollment nationally rose across all sectors this spring from last, where both community colleges and privates each reported a 12 percent jump in first-year students, public four-year universities saw a much smaller 3 percent bump, according to the research center.

In Iowa, both the University of Iowa and Iowa State University reported meaningful freshmen increases in the fall — UI boasting a 15 percent jump and Iowa State a 6 percent swell. UNI, on the other hand, saw a 7 percent drop in first-year students in the fall — erasing gains made despite the pandemic in 2020 and 2021.

And, as is common, all three this spring lost enrollment from the fall — with UI down 6 percent and ISU and UNI down 7 percent, according to the university registrars and the research center.

Campuses that are more selective tend to retain more students

Some of those semester-to-semester losses relate to the accessible nature of Iowa’s public universities, according to UI Associate Vice President for Enrollment Management Brent Gage. Where some campuses are highly selective about who they admit — taking only high-achieving students who’ve proven their academic ambitions and work ethic — Iowa’s public universities must admit all students who meet a certain academic threshold set by the Board of Regents.

“We're much more open access and less selective than a lot of our peer institutions,” Gage said. “And the greater your selectivity, typically the greater your retention. Because you're doing a lot more selection on the front end.”

UI for fall 2021 admitted 86 percent of its 22,434 applicants, well above its peer average of 59 percent. Iowa State University admitted 91 percent of its 20,357 applicants that year, above its peer average of 72 percent.

The University of Northern Iowa’s 86 percent admission rate was level with its regional peers, according to the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System.

Meanwhile, for example, the Big Ten’s Universities of Michigan and Illinois admitted 20 percent and 60 percent of their tens of thousands of applicants, respectively.

“So I think we're really pleased with our retention rate,” Gage said. “Just because of all the challenges over the last several years that students faced — whether it was COVID, whether it was online learning, whether it was inflation.”

Shifting demographics could lead to ‘enrollment cliff’

Issues of selectivity and retention will become increasingly important as not just Iowa but much of the nation faces shifting demographics that threaten an “enrollment cliff” in the coming years — with Iowa already reporting among the nation’s lowest net full-time enrollments at 115,604, according to the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association’s most recent report released earlier this month.

Gage told The Gazette states like Iowa felt pandemic-associated enrollment losses more acutely because of their smaller populations and heavier reliance on out-of-state enrollment.

“But now that we're kind of on the other side of that, last fall we had one of the top five largest freshman classes we've ever had,” he said. “And this year we look like we're right on par to be exactly where we want to be again.”

UI receives between 24,000 and 28,000 applications a year — dropping down to 22,434 for fall 2021 — and Gage said this year’s “application trends are really strong, both in-state and nationally.”

Despite some of the higher education enrollment pressures — with Iowa as a whole reporting an 11 percent enrollment drop since 2019 and a 39 percent slide in state higher ed appropriations per student since 1980 — Gage said UI’s enrollment strategy isn’t growth.

“If we can just have a consistent enrollment, we're really so much more efficient as an institution,” he said. “So our goal is really to create some consistency in our enrollment over time, and really strive to retain and graduate those students.”

To do that despite a looming enrollment cliff created by birthrates and shifting demographics, Gage said, UI needs to not only serve every Iowan it can but attract more students regionally and nationally.

“While our primary focus as a state institution is to serve Iowans, both of those strategies are really becoming more and more important,” Gage said.

Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com