Enrollment pressures bear down on Iowa’s private colleges

Unlike Iowa’s public universities that reported larger student bodies this fall than last, many of Iowa’s private colleges saw enrollment drop this semester. And even those bucking the decline have smaller student bodies today than they did years ago before the pandemic struck.

“While some Iowa colleges and universities reported slight upticks in entering first-year students this year, there has been an approximate 10-percent nationwide decline in higher education enrollment in the last decade — and no Iowa school has been immune to that,” Drake University Chief of Staff Nate Reagen told The Gazette.

Drake, in Des Moines, this fall reported a total enrollment of 4,504, down from 4,685 in fall 2022 and 4,875 in 2021, according to Iowa College Aid — a state agency that for decades has tracked higher education trends across Iowa as part of its focus on making higher education accessible.

Pre-pandemic, Drake’s total enrollment was 4,904 in fall 2017 and 5,139 a decade ago in fall 2013, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Similarly, Mount Mercy University saw enrollment drop this fall to 1,449 from 1,526 last year and 1,849 in 2017. In 2013, Mount Mercy, in Cedar Rapids, reported 1,761 students.

Graceland University, in Lamoni, reported a drop in students this year and over time, as did Upper Iowa University in Fayette. Upper Iowa’s enrollment has fallen this fall to 3,790 from 3,804 last year and 5,382 in fall 2018. A decade ago in 2013, Upper Iowa’s enrollment was 5,304, according to the national education statistics center.

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Both campuses joined the now-shuttered Iowa Wesleyan University in Mount Pleasant earlier this year in asking Gov. Kim Reynolds for $12 million each in Iowa pandemic relief aid to help their campuses grow. As Wesleyan’s needs were more dire, its administration sought a swift response — and Reynolds gave it to them in the form of a denial. The other campuses still are waiting for an answer.

Not every Eastern Iowa private college lost enrollment this fall — although most upticks were slight. William Penn University in Oskaloosa, another institution that sought COVID-19 relief aid from the governor, saw a 69-student bump to 1,552. Coe College in Cedar Rapids saw its total enrollment climb 16 students to 1,281. And Cornell College in Mount Vernon reported 13 more students this fall than last fall’s 1,074.

But all those campuses today have fewer students than they did a decade ago — and before COVID-19 rattled and unmoored, at least for a time, so many aspects of higher education. Coe had 1,431 students in 2019 and a similar count in 2013. Cornell had 1,125 in fall 2013, when William Penn had 1,875.

“It is every bit as stressed as the media makes it out to be,” Cornell President Jonathan Brand said of the small private higher education landscape earlier this month during The Gazette’s Iowa Ideas annual conference — even as Cornell has been among the few with steady increases of late. “I really think that the residential liberal arts college is in the bull's-eye right now.”

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‘Accelerated the decline’

Nathan Grawe, a professor of social sciences and economics and former associate dean at Carleton College in Minnesota, in 2018 described in his broadly-publicized, oft-cited book about a looming enrollment cliff for higher education. Considering a birth decline during the Great Recession, Grawe predicted the number of college-aged students in the Northwest and Midwest would drop nearly 15 percent by 2026.

“We talk a lot about the demographic cliff — it actually hasn't even started yet,” Brand said. “I think COVID has sort of accelerated the decline.”

The acceleration of fewer traditional college-bound students, perhaps, is due to pandemic-era shifts in the priorities, job prospects, family demands and financial resources of prospective students — who also are less white and more often low-income.

A poll of Iowa public high schoolers’ “post-graduation plans” — according to the Iowa Statewide Longitudinal Data System — found the percent planning to go to a four-year private college dropped from 13.3 percent in fall 2011 to 10.9 percent a decade later in the 2020-2021 academic year. The percentage planning to go to a community college fell from 38 to 30 percent over that period.

Meanwhile, the percentage planning to jump straight into a job increased from 9 to 15 percent, according to the data system. And nationally, 1.2 million more high school graduates ages 16 to 24 were employed and not in school in 2021 than in 2013. Three million fewer were enrolled in college, according to the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System.

A Pew Research Center poll asked adults without a bachelor’s degree why they didn’t have one or weren’t in school. The biggest reason — cited by 42 percent of respondents — was cost, saying they couldn’t afford it. About 36 percent said they needed to work to support their family, 29 percent said they “just didn’t want to,” and 23 percent said they didn’t need secondary education for the job they wanted.

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“The national landscape, I think, is every bit as precarious — and maybe even worse than people are aware — because nobody wants to scream uncle,” Brand said.

Haves vs. have-nots

And yet the nation’s elite institutions still are doing fine, according to Josh Moody, who covers business, finance and leadership for Inside Higher Ed.

“It seems like the gulf between the haves and the have-nots of higher education is growing,” he said.

“In-demand colleges, those of major brand names, seem to have their pick of students — while others are struggling to recover from a national post-COVID-19 enrollment hangover. And this is happening against the backdrop of inflation and wage pressures as colleges struggle to meet employee’s needs.”

Some campuses are buckling under that pressure — like Iowa Wesleyan University, which closed in the spring after 181 years.

“Both Fitch Ratings and Moody's Investors Service have predicted more college closures and mergers and reorganizations in the coming years,” Moody said. “I think there's something to that, given how much I find myself writing about those issues practically every week.”

In Iowa, one of the biggest “haves” in the private college sector is Grinnell College — which for the 2020 budget year reported an end-of-year endowment value of $2.1 billion. That ranked it No. 52 among all postsecondary institutions nationally — a list topped by Harvard University, which in 2021 reported a $53.2 billion endowment.

Before the University of Iowa’s $1.165 billion public-private partnership for its utility system in 2020, Grinnell had the largest endowment among any higher learning institution in the state.

Grinnell again this fall reported a slight uptick in total students, from 1,759 to 1,774, along with first-year students and students from Iowa. Its climb has been steady but stable, with Grinnell reporting 1,712 students in 2017 and 1,721 in fall 2013.

When looking just at full-time equivalent enrollments over a five-year span from 2018 to 2022, Grinnell is unique in reporting a 2 percent increase while all three of Iowa’s public universities reported meaningful losses — including 18 percent for the University of Northern Iowa over that period.

Many private campuses saw big FTE enrollment losses, too — including Luther College in Decorah at nearly 20 percent over that period; Simpson College in Indianola at nearly 16 percent; and Loras College in Dubuque at nearly 14 percent.

‘A lot tougher’

In response, area private colleges are taking steps toward a revamped model intended for them to thrive — including efforts to retain the students they have, attract non-traditional students and collaborate with other private, community and public colleges and universities.

Some campuses, in their recruiting efforts, are taking measures to address the steep “sticker price” of tuition, while also providing more aid and student support, especially because a growing number are the first in their family to attend college.

“A great number of them are first-generation students who have to navigate a minefield that they haven't been in before, and neither have their parents,” said Fletcher Lamkin, interim president of Clarke University in Dubuque. “And so we have to provide a lot more support to these students than we did even 20 years ago. And, guess what, that costs money — because you need people and you need programs to do it.

“But if you don't do it, then you're going lose a lot of students,” he said. “So all I can say is it's tougher. It's a lot tougher now was just 20 years ago.”

Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

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