(Updated November 28, 2022)
While for-profit colleges, community colleges, and small private schools received the most attention in the first iteration of the College Meltdown, regional public universities (and a few flagship schools) have also experienced financial challenges, reorganizations, and mergers, enrollment losses, layoffs and resignations, off-campus learning site closings and campus dorm closings, lower graduation rates, and the necessity to lower admissions standards. They are not facing these downturns, though, without a fight.
State universities, for example, are attempting to maintain or boost their enrollment through marketing and advertising--sometimes with the assistance of helpful, yet sometimes questionable online program managers (OPMs) like 2U and Academic Partnerships and lead generators such as EducationDynamics.
Academic Partnerships claims to serve 50 university clients. HEI has identified 25 of them.
Google ads also follow consumers across the Web, with links to enrollment pages. And enrollment pages include cookies to learn about those who click onto the enrollment pages. Schools share the information that consumers provide with Google Analytics and Chartbeat.
Advanced marketing will not improve institutional quality directly but it may raise awareness of these state schools to targeted audiences. Whether this becomes predatory may be an issue worth examining.
In order to stay competitive, state universities have to have a strong online presence and spend an inordinate amount of money on marketing and advertising. Ohio University and other schools now offer programs that are 100 percent online.
Despite marketing and enrollment appeals like this, we believe the financial situation could worsen at non-flagship state universities when austerity is reemployed--something likely to happen during the next economic downturn.
While state flagship universities have multiple revenue streams, they are often unaffordable for working families. Elite state universities, also known as the Public Ivies, have increasingly shut out state residents--in favor of people from out of state and outside the US--who are willing to pay more in tuition.
Aaron Klein at the Brookings Institution calls this significant (and dysfunctional) out-of-state enrollment pattern as The Great Student Swap.
State Universities with more than 4000 foreign students include UC San Diego, University of Illinois, UC Irvine, University of Washington, Arizona State University, Purdue University, Ohio State University, Michigan State University, and UC Berkeley.
People fortunate enough to attend large state universities as undergrads may feel alienated by large and impersonal classrooms led by graduate assistants and other adjuncts. There are also significant and often under-addressed social problems related to larger universities, including hunger, substance abuse, sexually transmitted diseases, hazing and sexual assault.
Online only versions of flagship schools may not be of the same quality as their brick and mortar counterparts. Purdue University Global and University of Arizona Global Campus, for example, are open enrollment schools for working adults which produce questionable student outcomes. These "robocollege" schools hire few full-time instructors and often spend a great deal of their resources on marketing and advertising.
EducationDynamics is a lead generator for "robocolleges" such as Purdue University Global and University of Arizona, Global Campus.
Purdue University Global has used questionable marketing and advertising.
The Higher Education Inquirer has already noticed the following schools in the Summer and Fall 2022 that received media scrutiny for lower enrollment, financial problems, or labor issues:
OPMs that help public colleges artificially maintain high enrollment levels are coming under increased scrutiny. Zovio is on life-support, trading at 0.16 a share. https://tcf.org/content/commentary/its-time-to-make-repairs-to-online-higher-ed/
ReplyDeleteMore students are going to realize that they are not getting an education via these programs and walk away from these colleges. The death spiral will continue.
ReplyDeleteZovio is dissolving. https://www.highereddive.com/news/zovio-takes-steps-to-dissolve-aims-to-sell-fullstack-academy-for-55m/632394/
ReplyDeleteIt's easier for state governments to not support these institutions, too.
ReplyDeleteCheck what Kansas just did with Emporia State.
Over the last many decades, colleges and universities have tried any number of methods to boost revenues--increasing enrollments, reorienting senior management towards an intense focus on fundraising, privatizing parts of their operations, developing online courses, hiring adjuncts at lower pay scales, and lately, outsourcing recruitment. Federal funding during Covid helped postpone a financial crisis that was in the making. It seems that the issue now is not if a crisis will appear, but when. Thanks to Dahn Shaulis for keeping us abreast of these developments.
ReplyDeleteI am particularly alarmed that there is not louder protests from state residents when the seat that they have been paying taxes on for years is given to a higher paying foreign student rather than their in state child
ReplyDeleteSome state legislators will complain bitterly about state universities admitting more out of state people than they'd like.
ReplyDelete