Dear Friends,
As I have shared with most of you in different settings in the past few months, we continue to pay careful attention to our enrollment data for the current year. We have been anticipating a decline in enrollment since the spring because of a number of factors. First, we have been graduating students at a record pace. That is fantastic news, but that success affects our enrollment (to be clear, I would prefer to graduate even more students!). Second, A-State had a very small freshman class in Fall 2017 (those are our current juniors) and we lost 28% of our Fall 2016 class (those are our current seniors). As I said in September 2017, those two cohorts will lag our enrollment numbers until May, 2021 (when the bulk of the Fall 2017 cohort will graduate). Third, while we have been blessed with a strong contingent of international students over the years, those numbers are declining nationally, just as they are in Jonesboro. Fourth, and perhaps most ominously, the college-going rate of Arkansas high school graduates continues to decline year after year, dipping below 50% a couple years ago. Nationally, college enrollment is down about 1.7%, so higher education is facing significant headwinds.
Now that the 11th class day has passed, we are ready to assess where we stand with Fall 2019. Our preliminary head count is 13,891 students for the Fall 2019 semester. This represents a 1.2% decline compared to the same time period last year. So the good news is that the decline is not as bad as we feared, but raw enrollment numbers mask the reality of our situation. To be clear, the number of on-campus students at A-State continues the decline that we have been seeing over the past several years. Our enrollment numbers this year are buttressed by continued growth of our online program and our campus in Mexico. While we are up 229 students (+5.9%) in our online programs and up 186 students at A-State CQ (+53.3%), we are down 617 Jonesboro Campus students compared to Fall 2018 (-6.7%).
Bearing in mind that not all Jonesboro Campus students pay the same amount, that we share tuition with our provider for online students, and that we do not receive revenue for CQ students yet, it is still too soon to know how our enrollment mix will affect our FY20 budget. I will say that we budgeted conservatively in anticipation of another difficult enrollment year, and that we will do everything that we can to limit the effects of decreased enrollment on our day-to-day operations. Our budget office is working on the revenue picture now, and I will share that news with you once we have it.
I have only heard anecdotally from my colleagues across the state, but it appears that many of the four-year public schools enrolled fewer freshman and international students this Fall. A-State saw declines in first-time on-campus students (down 174 to 1,391) and in international student enrollment (down 10.2% overall). The problem does not appear to be a lack of interest in A-State by our international students. The demand is there, but many of the students we admitted were not able to get student visas. Thus, the end-of-summer bump that we normally get right before the fall semester did not happen this year.
That said, there are still great things to celebrate about our enrollment story. A-State continues to recruit excellent students – the average ACT score of our incoming class has held steady at 24 for the past three years. Our freshman class, on average, earned a 3.5 high school GPA before enrolling at A-State. Our efforts to recruit an increasingly diverse student population is also succeeding, with more than 20% of our freshman class reporting minority status (compared to 16% in Fall 2017). The percent of freshman African Americans, in particular, has increased at A-State from 9% to 12% over the past two years.
In addition, A-State continues to be the state’s largest online college program, with 4,113 students enrolled in its online degree offerings (that number always increases in the second half of the fall semester as online students continue to enroll). These degrees provide access and opportunity to many students who would not otherwise be able to attend college. I understand that there may be some concern about the impact of online on our Jonesboro Campus enrollment, but my review of the demographic data leads me to believe that the effect is small. If I believed otherwise, we would be having a different conversation. The vast majority of students who are enrolled in our online program would not be enrolled on our Jonesboro Campus if online were not available.
I am very pleased with the work of our team in A-State Campus Queretaro, led by Vice Rector David Ray. We are still working on final numbers there, but we welcomed the largest freshman class in CQ’s history this fall and we retained a remarkable 90% of the Fall 2018 freshmen. That resulted in more than a 50% increase in enrollment compared to Fall 2018. The final bit of good news is that, for the second year in a row, A-State’s freshman retention topped 75% (compared to 72% in Fall 2017). Kudos to Dr. Jill Simons and the members of the Completion Commission. While I am glad that the past two years have seen our best retention outcomes ever, losing nearly 25% of our freshman class is still not where we need to be. I have asked our new Provost, Alan Utter, to assess our first-year retention efforts, and to seek areas where we can wisely invest to improve student success. Our new Vice Chancellor of Enrollment Management has reorganized his division and he has just brought on a new Senior Director of Admissions this past week. We now have a state-wide recruiting plan in place and are looking into ways to recruit more efficiently out-of-state. Quite frankly, though, I believe that there are plenty of potential Red Wolves right here in Arkansas, so we are maximizing our efforts to ensure that we leave no stone unturned in the Natural State. Based on these efforts, I am optimistic about the coming year and the results of our recruitment and retention efforts for this coming spring and next fall.
This news puts in perfect context the need for A-State to fully engage in creating our new strategic plan. As I have mentioned in the past month, September is the kick off for students, members of our faculty/staff, alumni, and community members to participate in the development of our strategic plan. Your steering committee has done an outstanding job laying out the framework for us. Now, we need to hear from all of our constituents as we begin to build the plan. On Wednesday, I will be sending the A-State community emails that outline the next steps and the timeline for the planning process. I am excited about building this plan with you all. This is an important moment in the life of our university. #Imagine what we can do – together.
