Colleges Find Business Booming
NEW LONDON, Conn. – Typically, college enrollment goes up when the economy is down.
And despite the severity of this economic downturn, the trend, for now, is still holding true.
”Many people think that people wouldn’t have money to spend on courses, but it has always been the reverse and enrollment goes up,” said Michael P. Meotti, the state’s commissioner of higher education. “People recognize that higher education in all forms, particularly shorter programs at community colleges, can help you get a job at a higher pay.”
Local college admissions officers are sorting through applications and trying to figure out what their fall 2009 enrollment numbers will look like, knowing that the economy could change drastically by then and that data about past trends may not apply this time.
”We have data that shows you should admit this number of students to enroll this number of students and we use that historical data to come up with an enrollment model, but the wild card is the economy,” said Lee H. Melvin, director of undergraduate admissions at the University of Connecticut. “Will people be able to afford it? And that throws a wrench into everything.”
This past fall, enrollment across all of the state’s higher education institutions reached a new high of 184,544. This was 3.2 percent more than the previous year – the largest annual gain in two decades.
The Department of Higher Education does not collect spring enrollment figures from the schools. At Mitchell College, there were 55 fewer full-time students enrolled for the spring semester, but some who left were seniors who had met their graduation requirements.
While some students may have chosen not to return to their schools because of financial issues, Meotti said, no schools have told him about a big drop-off between semesters.
Last fall, UConn planned to enroll about 3,250 freshmen, but 3,600 students accepted the school’s admissions offer.
”People had grabbed on early since the economy didn’t seem to be getting better,” Melvin said.
Many of these new students applied for school in the spring of 2008, largely before the economic outlook worsened. The schools are expecting even higher numbers this year.
Nearly 23,000 people applied to UConn’s Storrs campus for the fall, up from about 22,000 last year. The university plans to put more people on the waiting list, gradually accepting them as space becomes available, to prevent enrolling too many students again.
”The big outstanding issue right now is what happens for the fall, and could you start to see Connecticut students, whose families may have opted for expensive private schools or out-of-state schools, shift to enroll in Connecticut public institutions,” Meotti said. “It’s too early to tell how that will play out.”
Connecticut College is one application ahead of where it was last year, meaning the college expects applications to be just short of record numbers.
Applications to Mitchell College in New London – 2,000 so far – are up 20 percent over last year, which was the biggest year in 30 years. The current student population is just under 1,000.
Kevin Mayne, the school’s vice president for enrollment management and marketing, attributes the increased interest more to improvements made to the school’s facilities and curriculum rather than the economy.
But he did say that small schools can be vulnerable in a tough economy because they do not have the same resources and endowments as larger universities.
”We’ve grown our enrollment 5 to 6 percent every year for 10 years,” Mayne said. “We don’t need to grow it again so we have a little bit of wiggle room, but you never know what’s going to happen. We’re cautiously optimistic we’re going to be fine. Every indicator says we’re on par to meet our enrollment for the fall, but you kind of wait for the other shoe to drop.”
Local community colleges are anticipating high numbers for the fall, figuring that students will look at the price tags for four-year institutions and choose their institutions as less-expensive alternatives.
”2009 will be another record year for enrollment, the fifth year in a row,” said Dan Zaneski, director of admissions and recruitment at Three Rivers Community College in Norwich.
”Is the economy affecting our enrollment? Yes. It’s greatly increasing it,” he said, adding that the trouble now is not finding students; it’s accommodating everyone who wants to come.
Meotti is confident that enrollment will be up in the fall.
”We may see another record,” he said.
This article was written by Jennifer Grogin of the New London Day and Christian Camerota and ran on page A1. It can be found online here: http://theday.com/re.aspx?re=3c3f2822-8756-47e0-9e2a-ec35aea48d64
