Iowa university summer enrollment still below pre-COVID counts

IOWA CITY — Four weeks into summer school across Iowa’s public universities, enrollment remains below pre-pandemic levels — although campus leaders are “encouraged” by signs student counts are normalizing.

“When considering summer enrollment, our primary focus is on supporting student success, keeping students on track to graduate and preparing them to be successful in their careers,” University of Iowa spokesman Chris Brewer said.

UI summer enrollment for the term that started May 15 was 10,261 — the lowest since 1980; 183 below last summer’s 10,444; and 21 percent down from 2017’s 13,005.

Although Iowa State University saw a slight uptick of 65 students this summer to 8,468, its count remains well below the ISU summer peak of 12,060 in 2017.

“Following five summers of declining numbers, summer session enrollment is a strong 8,468 students,” Iowa State’s Department of Strategic Relations and Communications reported this week.

And while University of Northern Iowa’s summer enrollment inched up 42 students to 2,631, it’s 64 percent below the 4,326 UNI reported in summer 2017.

All three campuses offer an array of summer options — like UI’s four-, six-, eight- and 12-week summer sub-sessions that all started May 15, with the four-week program wrapping Saturday.

UNI, like Iowa State, also found bright spots from this summer’s enrollment boost, most notably among graduate students — with its 1,009 tally up 16 percent over both 2021 and 2022 counts.

“We are very encouraged by the uptick in graduate student enrollment this summer. That's an area where we really needed to see more numbers, so that's a good sign,” UNI spokesman Pete Moris told The Gazette. “The growth among younger undergrads is also a positive.”

Big enrollment picture

With more traditional high school graduates arriving on the university campuses with college credits — thanks to joint enrollment programming statewide — a summer course here or there can help more graduate on-time or even early.

“Many of these folks are on track to graduate in less than four years,” UNI’s Moris said.

Although Iowa’s public universities’ combined six-year graduation rate dipped in the most recent report in fall 2022, their collective four-year rate has been climbing — now reaching 56 percent, up from 35 percent in 2000.

Their three-year graduation rate is up to 5 percent from just 1 percent in 2000 — with UNI showing the biggest jumps in that category from under 2 percent for years to 8 percent last year.

The quicker paths to graduation could be in play in the public universities’ broader enrollment drops — mirrored in the lower summer counts — which were predicted, due to the state’s changing demographics, and were aggravated by COVID's impact on the traditional college experience and student lives.

Of the three public universities, only the UI last fall saw a slight increase in students to 30,015 — a 0.4 percent bump.

UNI’s fall 2022 enrollment dropped 3 percent to 8,949, which was 26 percent below its 12,159 reported a decade earlier in 2013.

And Iowa State’s 29,696 fall enrollment was 2.4 percent below the previous fall and 17 percent below its peak of 36,291 in fall 2016.

End of Summer Hawks

Although UI’s summer enrollment is down slightly again, officials report many factors play a role — including that the UI in 2014 debuted a new Summer Hawk Tuition Grant program aimed at increasing four-year graduation rates by encouraging more students to take summer classes.

The first iteration of the grant — available to first-year, first-time students enrolled in summer 2013 or after — covered the full cost of tuition for resident students for up to 12 hours. It also offered to make up the difference between resident and non-resident tuition for out-of-state students registered for more than four semester hours.

Interest in that program soared — increasing from 313 participants the first year to 1,142 the second — costing the university $3.5 million, up from $900,000. Even after paring down the program to cover just six semester hours, the UI in 2017 spent $6.2 million on summer grants for 2,161 students.

Following deep state budget cuts amounting to $15 million for UI in 2017, administrators announced the Summer Hawk Tuition Grant program would be phased out after the 2018 summer session.

The UI summer enrollment peaked that year, at 14,151, before falling to 12,019 in 2019. It has been steadily dropping since. Although the total is down again this year, UI’s undergraduate summer enrollment is up from 4,974 to 5,011.

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“Our summer enrollment numbers have remained relatively consistent over the past few years, with the drop in undergraduate enrollment in 2019 tied to the end of the Summer Hawk Tuition Grant program after the 2018 session,” UI spokesman Brewer said. “We believe our summer enrollment numbers have normalized following the end of that program and any anomalies caused by the pandemic.”

Online impact

All three campuses are focusing summer school efforts on meeting student needs and on meeting students where they are — offering not just in-class courses but internship experiences and online options.

Uptake on those virtual and off-site summer offerings might have the campuses feeling even more vacant than before COVID, which expanded the universities’ ability to offer hybrid learning experiences and students’ willingness to take them.

“Of the students taking courses this summer — 47 percent are enrolled in online courses, and 40 percent have arranged learning experiences, such as internships, student teaching, research, independent study, etc.,” Iowa State spokeswoman Angie Hunt said.

Just 13 percent of ISU’s summer students are taking classes either in a face-to-face or hybrid mode, a combination of in-person and online learning.

“When determining which courses to offer in the summer, the university considers course demand, with a particular focus on high-demand courses and those that help students make progress toward graduation,” Hunt said. “Additionally, we look to create a suite of summer course offerings that provide flexibility to students.”

At the University of Iowa, online-only summer counts have returned to pre-pandemic levels among undergraduate students.

But, among UI graduate students, the number taking online-only courses spiked from 523 in 2018 to 1,991 in 2020 and has remained high since — topping 1,430 this summer.

Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

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