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Overall Higher Ed Enrollments Drop, But Four-Year Public School Enrollments Continue to Rise

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For the first time in 15 years, fewer students are enrolling in higher education overall. Enrollments at public four-year and private non-profit institutes actually increased, but falling for-profit and two-year enrollments pulled down the average. According to released this week by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, colleges and universities eligible for federal financial aid experienced a 0.2 percent decrease in their total enrollments between Fall 2010 (21,588,124 students) and Fall 2011 (21,554,004 students). Although slight, this drop could indicate that fewer individuals are using some sectors of higher education as a refuge from the recent recession and/or that rising tuition rates are driving students out of some markets. Regardless, the new trend could be problematic for those advocating for higher education attainment as well as for universities hoping to derive more revenue from increased enrollments.

Some specific findings include:

  • For-profit institutions were hit the hardest. Enrollments dropped by 1.9 percent at four-year for-profits and by a whopping 7 percent at two-year for-profits. This is likely due to on for-profits as well as for-profit institutions deciding to use practices.
  • Two-year institutes struggled, while four-year schools continued to thrive. Two-year enrollments (across all sectors) are down by an average of 2.4 percent, while four-year enrollments are up an average of 1.2 percent. Much of the two-year drop was driven by the aforementioned drop in two-year for-profit enrollments; however, California鈥檚 recent limit on community college enrollments can also help explain the decrease in two-year numbers.
  • Part-time enrollments grew, but full-time enrollments shrunk. About 0.8 percent more students enrolled in part-time programs (across all sectors), whereas 0.8 percent fewer students enrolled in full-time programs. Two possible explanations are that the job market has recovered enough to keep more students employed or that more students now need income to support themselves during school.

91探花enrollments reflect those of four-year public institutes across the country. Total enrollments at four-year public institutes increased by an average of 1.5 percent from Fall 2010 to Fall 2011. UW鈥檚 total enrollments (undergraduate and graduate students combined) increased by 1.6 percent from Fall 2010 (49,940 students) to Fall 2011 (50,745 students) and by another 1.6 percent from Fall 2011 to Fall 2012 (51,576 students). For more 91探花enrollment statistics, see the 91探花Profiles.

Supreme Court Justices Hear (and Question) Arguments in Fisher v. University of Texas

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The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments yesterday in the landmark affirmative action case (UT) (please see our previous for more information). Four Justices will need to support UT if it and, potentially, public colleges across the nation are to continue using race and as a factor in admissions decisions. Three justices hearing the case have historically supported affirmative action. A fourth supporter, Justice Kagan, recused herself because she played a role in preparing the Obama administration鈥檚 UT-supportive . The other five justices have typically expressed doubt over affirmative action鈥檚 value. Of these, Justice Kennedy is regarded as the most plausible swing vote. A 4-4 tie would uphold the federal appeals court ruling that UT鈥檚 program is constitutional.

Justices seeming to favor Fisher questioned:

  • If UT could know it had achieved a desired level of diversity without setting a target and verifying its students鈥� self-reported race; and,
  • Whether an admission process is truly fair if it benefits minority students from affluent backgrounds as much those from poverty. Justice Alito Jr. said: “I thought the whole purpose of affirmative action was to help students who come from underprivileged backgrounds.”

Justices seeming to favor UT questioned:

  • Whether Ms. Fisher鈥檚 suit is even legal, given UT鈥檚 statement that she would have been rejected regardless of race considerations; and,
  • Why the Court should change its 2003 decision on Grutter v. Bollinger鈥斺�淎 case into which so much thought and effort went and so many people around the country have depended,鈥� said Justice Breyer.

Both sides agreed that the Court may have led colleges astray in 2003 by ruling that applicants’ race could be considered in order to assemble a “critical mass” of minority students. They said the term 鈥渃ritical mass鈥� (defined by Grutter as the sufficient number of minority students to ensure they feel comfortable speaking out, not isolated) encourages colleges to aim for some numerical threshold of minority students, but such an approach could violate the Court’s ban on college鈥檚 use of quotas. After the arguments, the esteemed offered that: “Affirmative action is alive but ailing, the idea of ‘critical mass’ to measure racial diversity is in very critical condition, and a nine-year-old precedent may have to be reshaped in order to survive.”

The Court is expected to decide the case in spring or summer of next year.

University District Livability Partnership Underway

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Staff from OPB in partnership with staff from Regional and Community Relations are participating in a community-wide effort known as the University District Livability Partnership (UDLP) 鈥� a four-year strategic initiative to encourage investment for a vibrant, walkable University District Community. The UDLP involves University District residents, business, social service providers, congregations, the Greater University Chamber of Commerce, 91探花 and City of Seattle鈥檚 Office of Economic Development, Department of Planning & Development, Police Department and Department of Neighborhoods. Additional information regarding the UDLP may be found .

The partnership includes four companion projects: a commercial revitalization plan, urban design framework, community conversations, and long-term leadership. U District Next: A Community Conversation is a series of events designed to bring local and national voices to the U District to provide perspectives of experiences that may be relevant to the future possibilities in the U District. The discussions are structured such that participants will have the opportunity to share their thoughts and ideas. The first event is to take place on October 11th at 5:30 PM. The event is a walk and talk tour of the University District focused on the pedestrian experience. To learn about future events or to participate through the web visit .

Getting Teenagers Hooked on Computer Science

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The Association for Computing Machinery estimates that, from now until 2020, 150,000 new jobs in computer science fields will open each year. Despite such high demand for computer science skills, just 40,000 American students graduated with a bachelor鈥檚 degree in Computer Science (CS) in 2010. While the technology industry in Seattle has boomed in the past decade, employers such as Microsoft and Amazon have been forced to search outside the state for qualified employees. Despite very limited resources, the 91探花has managed to by 60 percent over the past ten years. However, this increase has not been enough to meet the ever-growing demand for STEM talent.

Technology companies blame a lack of education, especially in early grades, for the shortage of computer science majors in Washington. Because of the high starting salaries offered at tech companies, CS graduates rarely pursue education as a career path, leaving few teachers to help get students interested in computer science. Furthermore, the 聽(CSE) program at the 91探花 is not able to meet student demand given current resources. The department turns away approximately sixty percent of applicants, although many are well-qualified. To help remedy this problem, the 2011-13 state budget redirected $3.8 million in current 91探花state funds to convert 425 existing student FTE to Engineering FTE. CSE estimates 80 additional CS degrees will be produced each year.

Nevertheless, technology companies want to get students hooked on computer science even earlier. To address the shortage of CS teachers in K-12 institutions, Kevin Wang, a Program Manager at Microsoft with a graduate degree in Education from Harvard, founded a program called (Technology Education and Literacy in Schools) in 2010. The program recruits Microsoft employees to volunteer at local high schools to teach computer science courses for two-to five hours per week in the mornings. Employees are paid a small stipend by Microsoft for their volunteer time, and go back to work later in the day. The goal of the program is to increase the number of high school students getting exposed to and passionate about computer science, which will hopefully lead to more computer science graduates later on.

The program has grown exponentially since its inception in 2010. TEALS teachers taught in four Seattle-area high schools during the 2010-2011 school year; this year, 110 teachers are teaching in 37 high schools across eight states. The teaching pool has expanded to include 19 non-Microsoft teachers as well. By all accounts, the program has been a huge success, with over 300 students enrolled in AP Computer Science courses taught by TEALS teachers this year.

To read more about the program, read this 聽in the New York Times, or check out the .

UW’s Impressively-Low Student Loan Default Rates Contrast with National Averages

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Last Friday, the U.S. Department of Education released its annual on federal student loan cohort default rates (CDRs) and, although national CDRs are gloomily high, UW鈥檚 rates are impressively low. As the Department is in the process of switching to a more accurate three-year CDR measure, this year鈥檚 report includes both the FY 2010 two-year and the FY 2009 three-year CDRs. These rates represent the percentage of student borrowers who failed to make loan payments for 270 days within two or three years, respectively, of leaving school.

The Department provides breakdowns of its data by , and . Here are some key findings:

Nationally

  • The FY 2010 two-year CDR increased from 8.8 to 9.1 percent overall. Public institutions increased from 7.2 to 8.3 percent, private nonprofits increased from 4.6 to 5.2 percent, but for-profits decreased from 15.0 to 12.9 percent (though their two-year CDR is still the highest).
  • The FY 2009 three-year CDR is 13.4 percent overall (this is the Department鈥檚 first year reporting three-year data) with public institutions at 11 percent, private nonprofits at 7.5 percent, and for-profits at 22.7 percent.

Locally

  • UW鈥檚 three-year CDR is a remarkable 3.1 percent鈥攎ore than 10 percentage points below the national average.
  • UW鈥檚 two-year CDR increased slightly from 1.4 to 2.1 percent, but is still well below the national average.
  • The State of Washington鈥檚 three-year CDR is 11.3 percent鈥攂elow the national average, but still above approximately half the states.

Unfortunately, the Department does not release loan default rates disaggregated by student demographic (even though it collects this information), which prevents schools from identifying and catering assistance to students with the most need. While third-parties have conducted studies indicating that and are more likely to default on loans, schools and legislators need better data from the federal government in order to fully identify at-risk groups and mitigate rising default rates.

Just 43 Percent of College-Bound Seniors College Ready, College Board Finds

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On Monday, the College Board released a report indicating that only 43 percent of the 1.66 million college-bound seniors taking the SAT in 2012 are 鈥渃ollege ready,鈥� as defined by achieving a score of 1550 or more on the SAT. The College Board claims a student scoring 1550 or higher on the SAT has a 65 percent chance of achieving a B- or higher average in their first year at a four-year college. The percentage of college-bound seniors scoring 1550 or higher in 2012 was the same in 2011, though about 17,000 additional seniors took the test in 2012.

Scores in the component sections have been slipping for some time: In critical reading, average scores dropped from 500 in 2008 to 496 in 2012; in writing, scores fell from 493 in 2008 to 488 in 2012, and average achievement in mathematics stayed constant at 514. The College Board blames this partly on the huge increase in students taking the test鈥攖he number of test-takers has grown by 6 percent since 2008鈥攁nd partly on an insufficient college-preparatory curriculum in America鈥檚 high schools. Seniors that took four years of English, and three each of math, science and social studies scored an average of 144 points higher than students that did not complete these core courses, indicating that college preparatory coursework significantly improves a student鈥檚 performance on the SAT.

Encouragingly, more minority and low-income students than ever are participating in the SAT. Forty-five percent of seniors taking the SAT in 2012 were minority students, and 36 percent reported their parents鈥� highest level of education was a high school diploma or less. In addition, twenty-two percent of SAT-takers took the test for free through the College Board鈥檚 fee waiver program. This represents the largest number of fee waivers used since the program began in 1970. Unfortunately, minority and low-income students, apart from Asian American students, still perform substantially worse on all parts of the SAT than white and middle/high income students do. On critical reading, for example, black students score 99 points lower than white students on average (428 vs. 527).

To learn more about this year鈥檚 statistics, check out Inside Higher Ed鈥檚 or read the .

Supreme Court Case Calls into Question the Use of Race in Higher Ed Admissions

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On October 10th, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in (UT)鈥攖he first Supreme Court case on the use of race in higher education admissions since Grutter v. Bollinger in 2003. The case asks that the Court either declare UT鈥檚 admissions policy to be in violation of Grutter v. Bollinger or entirely overrule their 2003 decision that race could play a limited role in universities鈥� admissions policies. An overruling of Grutter could effectively end affirmative action at public universities.

Although around 80 percent of UT鈥檚 admissions decisions are made via a unique, race-blind method called the , the case challenges whether UT鈥檚 鈥渉olistic file review鈥� system (which is used to fill the remaining 20 percent of openings) exceeds their right to consider race and ethnicity. Under the holistic file review system, admissions officers and hired readers assess the full application submitted, reading essays and recommendation letters, assessing writing skills, and importantly, seeking to understand the context in which SAT scores and GPAs were earned. Race is one of many contextual factors considered. The 91探花adopted a race-neutral version of the holistic approach when it became clear, several years after the passage of , that a composite score admissions platform (which essentially scores applicants based on GPA and SAT or ACT scores) insufficiently accommodated diverse applicants. Over time, the UW鈥檚 holistic review, even without a race factor, was found to significantly increase the diversity of entering classes.

In fact, across the country use similar systems to foster diversity in their schools, and many have voiced their avid support for UT. In August, the American Council on Education filed a on behalf of itself and 39 higher education groups backing UT. The Obama administration also filed a UT-supportive , as did a group of U.S. senators, and a number of states (including California, where voters barred public universities from considering race in admissions).

However, last Friday, opponents of UT鈥檚 holistic review caught a break when the Brookings Institute, a nonprofit public policy organization based in D.C., presented suggesting that eliminating the consideration of race would have a lesser impact on minority students than some believe. In addition, their research implies that under affirmative action, minority students may actually achieve less academic success than they would otherwise. The studies received criticism for their methodology and lack of peer-review, but have still caught the attention of the media and public.

Debates will likely continue through next month. If the Court rules in favor of Fisher, the use of holistic review across the country may be called into question, although the UW鈥檚 race-neutral model should be significantly less vulnerable.

Possible Federal Sequester Will Harm State Budgets

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The UW’s Office of Federal Relations posted information this morning detailing the federal sequester’s impact on state budgets. The grim summary is available .

The Offices of Federal Relations, Planning & Budgeting, and Research recently collaborated on a summarizing basic sequester information. Note that sequester updates are available on the Office of Federal Relations’ .

Is It All About the Money?

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As a recent discussed, if you attend college, you are more likely to earn more money. But, as you might imagine, the financial value of higher education depends on what program you choose and where.

Information on the annual earnings of students from different programs and institutions is exactly what Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat of Oregon, and Sen. Marco Rubio, a Republican of Florida, hope to provide. Their recently-introduced “” proposes creating a state-based, individual-level data system linking the average costs and graduation rates of specific programs and institutions to their graduates鈥� accrued debt and annual earnings.

Although useful, Senator Wyden acknowledged that such information is limited and that focusing on financial indicators alone could undermine the importance of liberal arts鈥攚hose graduates may not earn large salaries right after college. He stated that the bill鈥檚 intention is 鈥渢o empower people to make choices.鈥� However, 鈥減eople鈥� include not just students, but policy makers鈥攕uch as Florida鈥檚 who sparked controversy last October when he asserted that state money should go to job-oriented fields, rather than fields like anthropology which, he said, do not serve the state’s vital interest.

Regardless of the bill鈥檚 success, about half of the states already have the ability to link postsecondary academic records with labor data. And some, such as , have already done so. Here in Washington, the is in the process of connecting certain employment and enrollment data for schools, such as the UW, to analyze in the coming months.

All this begs the question: Is college chiefly for personal economic gain?

A recent by the College Board highlights both the financial and nonfinancial payoffs of college. Additionally, David A. Reidy, head of the philosophy department at University of Tennessee Knoxville, stated in a recent Chronicle that four-year degrees, particularly in liberal-arts, are not solely for job training. “The success of the American democratic experiment depends significantly on a broadly educated citizenry, capable of critical thinking, cultural understanding, moral analysis and argument,” he wrote. Philosophy and other core disciplines help nurture such a citizenry, he continued, “And the value there is incalculable.”

WA Revenue Forecast Up Slightly

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The Economic Revenue and Forecast Council (ERFC) released its September on the 19th. Believe it or not: Anticipated revenues for the current (2011-13) and upcoming (2013-15) biennia were slightly ahead of the previous forecast.

Although only eight months of the current biennium remain, revenues are running $29 million ahead of predicted levels due to better than anticipated employment numbers, construction activity, and real estate excise tax collections.

Projected revenues for the upcoming 2013-15 biennium (FY14 & FY15) were raised by $23 million; but, as the full forecast and note, the downside risks resulting from potentially stagnant employment gains, an extremely weak Washington export market, sovereign European debt crisis, and possible threaten these modest gains.

While ERFC will refine the revenue forecast again in November and the Governor will use it as a basis for her budget, she and the Office of Financial Management (OFM) have already committed any above current forecasted levels to K12. Revenue projections may have increased slightly with the release of this forecast, but required expenditures in the upcoming biennium will potential revenues. a $1 billion deficit out the gate.