When colleges and universities across the nation began seeing significant drops in enrollment last fall and this winter, the unexpected and costly downward shifts sent recruiting and admissions officers scrambling.
Now, with admissions season at full tilt but household finances evaporating as the economy continues to sputter, school officials are creating myriad strategies to ensure the students they are admitting this spring and the ones currently in school will actually enroll this fall.
Morehouse College, which saw a 4 percent drop in enrollment this spring as students found themselves financially unable to continue their studies, is leaving nothing to chance. It’s putting financial aid packages “on the table” months earlier than in the past and abandoning its traditional hot pursuit of “blue chip” students who might be persuaded to come to Morehouse. Instead, it’s targeting top students who had expressed a strong interest in attending the school. The school also abandoned its relationships with private banks last month and has returned to the government’s direct student lending program, a more reliable source for funding student loans in this economy.
“In a lot of ways, the admissions process is a crap shoot,” says Sterling Hudson, dean of admissions at Morehouse College, the historically Black men’s college in Atlanta. “This year it’s a crap shoot, and you’re blindfolded,” says Hudson, echoing the sentiments of admissions, enrollment and financial aid officers at institutions across the nation.
“There’s lots of uncertainty and anxiety among admissions officers about enrollment,” says Hudson. “All of us can sound confident, but behind closed doors we’re nervous. When colleges budget for a year, they are not looking at a million dollar swing,” says Hudson, noting that just a 50-student drop in enrollment could cost his school, where tuition, room and board costs $32,000 a year, $1.6 million in lost revenue.
Applications for admission, boosted by the surge in high school graduates this spring, have not been a concern, say officials at public and private colleges in rural and urban settings. The universal worry is being able to convert these admits into actual paying enrollees.
