The Edge: Chasing Enrollment Against the Odds

Colleges aim to expand their graduate and adult-student head counts, but many lack adequate resources and expertise. ADVERTISEMENT [The Edge Logo]( Did someone forward you this newsletter? [Sign up free]( to receive your own copy. You can now read The Chronicle on [Flipboard]( and [Google News](. Hi. I’m Goldie Blumenstyk, a senior writer at The Chronicle, covering innovation in and around higher ed. This week I highlight how colleges may be pursuing unrealistic enrollment goals, share some of your responses to my reporting on incremental credentials, and pass along some thinking on what’s top of mind for state higher-education leaders and ways community colleges can tap some of the billions in new federal tech-industry investments. Also, Shark Tank: Edu Edition, our annual pitch-a-thon, is returning live to SXSW EDU on March 7, in Austin, Tex. Interested in competing? Please apply using [this quick form](. ADVERTISEMENT SUBSCRIBE TO THE CHRONICLE Enjoying the newsletter? [Subscribe today]( for unlimited access to essential news, analysis, and advice. Colleges with enrollment ambitions go up against the odds. A number of institutions are hoping to bolster their finances by expanding graduate and adult enrollment, but most aren’t actually that well positioned to succeed in this endeavor. So says a recent [survey]( of college leaders conducted by the Education Advisory Board, which caught my attention. EAB estimates that of the $226 billion in tuition revenue generated by colleges in 2019, about 40 percent came from graduate-level and adult-serving programs; traditional undergraduate programs made up the rest. Very few of the institutions in this survey were even close to that proportion, EAB’s managing director for consulting services, Beth Donaldson, told me. “They’re trying to improve their market share in a very competitive environment,” she said. But the big surprise in this survey for me was that only about 8 percent of respondents said they considered competition from nonuniversity providers a significant challenge to increasing that graduate and adult-student head count. I hesitate to put too much stock in a survey with just 60 respondents, but I did find it telling that these college leaders cited so many other challenges — limited budgets, lack of expertise in marketing and in online delivery, and lack of clear leadership for graduate and adult-serving programs — ahead of competition from providers like Coursera, EdX, employers, and any number of professional associations. It made me wonder: Are these institutions sticking their heads in the sand when it comes to alternative providers? Or do I spend so much time following that sector that I have an outsize sense of its impact? I may need a reality check. [I’d like to hear](mailto:goldie@chronicle.com) what you think. Donaldson, meanwhile, said the finding that hit me wasn’t what struck her the most. For her, it was that “everyone said they felt they were behind and that they didn’t have the strategy or resources to get there.” Giving incremental credentials real currency . Several of you responded after reading my newsletter two weeks ago [on the Credential as You Go movement.]( I especially appreciate the three questions posed by Amy Doonan Cronin, executive director of the [New York Six]( a consortium of liberal-arts colleges in upstate New York. Like me, she’s a strong believer in that model but also sees the potential for incremental credentials as an alternative and a complement to traditional college study. Cronin’s questions: How do or will four-year institutions treat credentials in evaluating applicants from the many community and technical colleges engaged in this work? Do transfer agreements take any of these credentials into account? And on the employment end, what is the impact of holding a credential versus a degree on earnings, advancement opportunities, etc.? “We trumpet the value of a college degree,” Cronin wrote. “If we’re going to add credentials to the portfolio in a meaningful way, we have to be able to articulate the value proposition they bring, too.” She’s right. It’s not enough for colleges to offer those credentials. They also need to do everything possible to ensure that they have real currency. I was also moved by comments from Ruben P. Salazar, an administrative staff member at McLennan Community College, in Waco, Tex, who told me he had dropped out of an art program at a four-year college more than 20 years ago but now finds himself wanting to yell in job interviews: “Why won’t you just let me prove to you my worth?” Salazar believes “continuous education does not only have to equate to a higher degree,” but without a formal degree, he says, he gets “into landlocked positions wherever I go.” For Salazar’s sake — and the many like him — perhaps meaningful incremental credentials could be the key to greater opportunity. Check these out. Here are some education-related items from other outlets that recently caught my eye. Did I miss a good one? [Let me know](mailto:goldie@chronicle.com). - Ensuring a continued supply of schoolteachers and promoting economic and work-force development top the list of concerns for members of the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association, a new survey shows. “Optimism for the 2023 state legislative sessions is tempered by robust competition for state resources, high inflation, and continued economic uncertainty,” Tom Harnisch and Sophia Laderman write in [State Priorities for Higher]( [Education in 2023: Survey of SHEEOs](. “While surpluses in many states are substantial, the post-pandemic environment also has extensive needs for public investments, including in affordable housing, competitive pay to attract and retain public-sector employees, and broadening access to health care.” - Community colleges can help fulfill the vision of the 2022 [C]( and Science Act]( but according to an expert [cited by Politico]( the institutions will need to develop more experiential-learning opportunities to help students be prepared for the many middle-skilled jobs expected to develop from its $54 billion in subsidies. - While many expect the U.S. Supreme Court to block the Biden administration’s student-loan-forgiveness plan, arguments in a friend-of-the-court brief from two conservative law-school professors might keep the plan alive. Like many conservatives, the brief’s authors don’t believe that President Biden has the authority to cancel student debt, Diverse: Issues in Higher Education [reports.]( But the authors also don’t believe that many of the plaintiffs challenging the plan have standing to sue in the first place. - As advocates continue to press for college rankings that take institutions’ capacity to promote social mobility into account, one medical-school leader now argues for a more holistic approach to med-school rankings, too. David Lenihan, chief executive of Ponce Health Sciences University, argues in [an opinion piece]( in STAT that med schools should measure not only how they create upward socioeconomic movement for their students from low-income backgrounds, but also how many of their graduates build their careers in areas facing health challenges. The resulting data, Lenihan writes, “would offer a snapshot of how successfully the school’s grads were using their education and skills to upgrade the health outcomes for America’s neediest patients.” Got a tip you’d like to share or a question you’d like me to answer? Let me know, at goldie@chronicle.com. If you have been forwarded this newsletter and would like to see past issues, [find them here](. To receive your own copy, free, register [here](. If you want to follow me on Twitter (yeah, for now at least, I’m still there), [@GoldieStandard]( is my handle. Goldie’s Weekly Picks RACE AND POLITICS [The Plan to Dismantle DEI]( By Eric Kelderman [STORY IMAGE]( Model legislation lays out how legislatures could outlaw public colleges’ efforts to attract and retain people of color and other marginalized groups. SPONSOR CONTENT | Oregon State University [Oregon State University launches world-class research center]( TECHNOLOGY [Public Colleges Across the Country Are Banning TikTok on Their Networks. Here’s What That Means.]( By Kate Marijolovic [STORY IMAGE]( Will the bans, prompted by security concerns about the app, stop students from using it? “I would be very surprised if that actually works,” one expert says. PRISON EDUCATION [How Prison Education Overlooks Women]( By Katherine Mangan [STORY IMAGE]( For women serving time, fewer choices and more delays stand in the way of college degrees. SPONSOR CONTENT | Boston University [Bringing clarity and rigor to the complex field of data science]( A dedicated unit at Boston University is applying academic rigor to answer some of industry’s biggest questions. 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