Iowa private college enrollment struggles in wake of pandemic, perception shifts

Forces affecting higher education — from disruptions like the pandemic to evolving workforce demands, student needs, demographics and public perceptions — are evident in recent enrollment counts for Iowa’s private colleges and universities, which are down again for many this fall.

Even campuses that saw slight total enrollment upticks — like Loras, Simpson and Wartburg colleges — still are reporting smaller student bodies than five years ago.

“I think the constellation of things that's happened over the last few years, including COVID, has certainly eroded the numbers in higher education,” Mount Mercy University President Todd Olson said during this week’s Iowa Ideas conference hosted by The Gazette. “We know that all of us are still recovering from that.”

Acknowledging some good news in the form of freshmen increases — like on his campus, which saw its first-year class tick up from 202 last year to 239 this fall — Olson conceded, “It's certainly a challenging time across higher education.”

Regarding total enrollment on Cedar Rapids’ private campuses this fall, Coe College reported 1,195 students — down about 6.5 percent from 1,278 last year and nearly 17 percent from its 1,431 students five years ago in 2019. Mount Mercy reported 1,402 students this semester, down about 3 percent from 1,449 last year and 22 percent from its 1,808 count five years ago.

Cornell College in Mount Vernon has held mostly steady over the last five years — give or take a few dozen — as it inches its way back toward 2013’s 1,125, with 1,097 enrolled this year.

“I think COVID threw a big wrench in a lot of things,” Des Moines Area Community College President Rob Denson said of the reason freshmen bumps on some Iowa campuses this fall aren’t immediately translating to total enrollment increases.

‘Snowball fight’

Although the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education for years has been predicting an “enrollment cliff” — expecting American high school graduate numbers will start falling in 2025 or 2026 — the commission projected Iowa first would see an 8 percent increase in high school graduates from 2019 and 2026, before the big drop.

While that increase has born out to some degree, any potential benefit to Iowa colleges and universities has been countered by a 10 percent drop in the number of Iowa high school graduates who went on enroll in college.

“As of the last data from the Iowa Department of Education, 42.3 percent of Iowa high school graduates are not going on to college,” Denson said. “Being in Iowa, where we always value education and higher education, that's an embarrassingly high number. But I think that financing, COVID and everything else has just made people question the additional work and time it would take to get a degree.”

In addition to Mount Mercy and Coe, Drake University in Des Moines this fall is reporting a 3.5 percent enrollment drop from 4,505 last fall to 4,345 this year — which is 11 percent below 2019’s 4,884. Luther College in Decorah this fall reported a total enrollment of 1,384, down 5.4 percent from last fall’s 1,463, which was down 9 percent from the year before.

Looking back to its 2,005 students in 2018, Luther’s current enrollment is down 31 percent.

Although Loras College in Dubuque held steady this fall with 1,239 students — five above last fall’s 1,234 enrollment — it remains 17 percent below its fall 2018 enrollment. The same is true for Simpson College in Indianola, which increased to 1,251 this fall over last year’s 1,163 but remains 13 percent below its 1,444 count in 2018.

Both Wartburg College in Waverly and Grand View University in Des Moines are down only slightly from five years ago.

And Grinnell College — esteemed as one of the top private liberal arts institutions nationally — remains among the few private campuses in Iowa that has reported an increase over the five-year span, from 1,733 in 2019 to 1,788 today.

Some of the drops have been blamed on a shift in perception of the value of higher education. A 2024 Gallup poll showing the percentage of Americans who have a “great deal” of confidence in higher ed dropping from 57 percent in 2015 to 36 percent in 2024. Meanwhile, the portion with “very little or no” confidence in higher ed leaped from 10 to 32 percent over that span. And while confidence has dropped across the political spectrum, the loss has been more pronounced for those identifying as Republicans.

“It's not news to anyone to say that our society is very polarized right now,” said Mount Mercy’s Olson. “There are some views on the left that are very off-putting and can be seen as very divisive for a lot of people in the country. There are some views on the right that I think are also very off-putting and can be pretty disparaging of higher education.”

Colleges and universities, therefore, are “caught at times here in what I would just call a snowball fight.”

“We get into our two opposing camps, and you're either in my camp or you're the opponent,” he said. “And I think one of the key roles that higher education needs to play is to demonstrate that we can reclaim the center politically, that we welcome folks with different viewpoints.”

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‘Larger together’

Although all three of Iowa’s public universities this fall reported total enrollment increases — with both the University of Iowa and Iowa State University also welcoming bigger freshman classes — all three remain well below peak enrollment levels in 2016 and 2017. ISU, for example, reported 36,291 students in 2016 — about 19 percent above this fall’s count of 30,432. The UI in 2017 had 32,065, which is about 4 percent above this fall’s 30,779.

The University of Northern Iowa until last fall had been on a downward trajectory since its peak of 14,070 in 2001 to a modern-day low of 8,949 in 2022 — representing a 36 percent drop. But its enrollment this fall increased for a second-straight year, from 9,021 in fall 2023 to 9,283 this fall, and administrators across public and private education report novel initiatives and collaborations to reverse the downward trend.

“I think it is absolutely essential that we think about collaboration,” Olson said, reporting efforts to raise each other up across the public, private and community college sectors through new degree pathways, industry partnerships, internships, virtual options and even mergers — like Mount Mercy’s recent announcement it’s combining with St. Ambrose University of Davenport.

Kirkwood Community College, also based in Cedar Rapids, welcomed about 100 more students this fall, bringing its total enrollment from 12,662 to 12,765 — but still 10 percent below the 14,182 tally in 2019.

“That will give us a number of advantages — certainly economies of scale,” Olson said. “And that will matter in higher education because it is, frankly, tougher in this environment for smaller colleges to really prosper. As we can become somewhat larger together, that will be helpful. But more importantly than that, it will open up some new doorways for students at both institutions.”

Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

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