Decline In Enrollment Research Articles

Paying the Price? An Investigation Into the Continued Decline of Part-time Higher Education in England

Part-time study represents a significant segment of the UK higher education sector accounting for almost half of all university enrolments at its peak in 2004, yet since then the different modes of study (full-time/part-time) have followed very different trajectories. A ‘perfect storm’ of economic conditions and government policy changes have combined to trigger a dramatic decline in part-time higher education enrolments even though full-time study enrolments continue to expand. The steep rise in tuition fees in 2012 is widely regarded as the sole catalyst behind the decline. However, this view almost certainly oversimplifies a complex array of economic pressures and policy changes that have coalesced to depress part-time recruitment. This article looks beyond the fee hike by synthesising the findings from a number of recent significant studies to separate the influence that recent governmental policy changes, supply-side factors and demand-side barriers have each exerted on part-time enrolments. The article continues by exploring some of the recent initiatives for enabling more accessible and flexible study that may help to slow the decline and also discusses abandoning the binary separation of the study modes as discrete entities as this may be particularly detrimental to the part-time mode.

Higher education under fire: implementing and assessing a culture change for sustainment

PurposeLeadership development is a significant organizational investment and is considered a foundation for a culture change process. In a highly disruptive environment, higher education administrators are investigating the potential benefits of this investment. Specifically, while the great recession was underway in 2010, and with a backdrop of continuous enrollment decline, a business school in a public university in the USA utilized an experimental design to test a globally recognized business model for leadership development and its impacts on leadership effectiveness. The paper aims to discuss these issues.Design/methodology/approachThe intervention included a two-day training session followed by a year-long process for cementing in learning, while examining ensuing leadership effectiveness. Potential control variables in the model included measures of four dimensions of leadership fitness which were defined as the physical, socio-emotional, spiritual and mental dimensions. When the leadership development intervention showed promising results the business school forged ahead to implement a culture change process based on the leadership development intervention to foster teamwork and innovation.FindingsAs a longitudinal implementation and assessment process, subsequent results of the culture change process spurred year over year increases in enrollments, student retention, student placement, along with consistently escalating faculty research and academic program rankings. The culture change process spread organically from the business school throughout the university as a whole with similar positive impacts.Research limitations/implicationsImplications, including an assertion that leadership development is a viable tool for higher education’s organizational sustainment are discussed.Originality/valueFuture research opportunities of institutional outcomes in higher education due to a systemic investment in annual culture enhancement are also discussed.

Law Student Success and Supports: Examining Bar Passage and Factors That Contribute to Student Performance

In recent years, law schools have experienced a decline in enrollment and bar passage. Higher education has been challenged to understand this new phenomenon and conduct research that can inform law student success practices and policies. This paper presents findings from research conducted at a large, Midwestern public university that investigated the factors and student characteristics most strongly associated with bar passage. Results suggest that bar passage can be predicted by a wide battery of variables. Despite some literature that suggests otherwise, however, LSAT and undergraduate GPA are weakly predictive, while information from the first year of law school – even the performance in just one first semester course – explains significantly more variation in bar passage. These preliminary results provide important first insights into bar passage.

The Effects of the Vietnam Hunger Eradication and Poverty Reduction Program on Schooling

This paper studies the effects of the Vietnam Hunger Eradication and Poverty Reduction (HEPR) program on school enrolment, using longitudinal data that span over 15 years and a difference-in-differences research design. We find that early treatment (at age 8) increases children enrolment by about 9 percent. This positive effect disappears by age 15, and is more pronounced in urban areas. In sharp contrast, children receiving treatment later (age 12–15) are more likely to drop out by age 15, especially in rural areas. The decline in enrolment is paralleled by an increase in labor market participation. We interpret these divergent results by age as an unintended effect of another program aimed at fostering vocational training among the 15+ in rural areas. Our findings highlight the importance of integrating different anti-poverty measures to reduce inefficiency and achieve social goals.

Chapter 6: Recruitment in PETE: Interview Results and Discussion

Background/Purpose: Physical education teacher education (PETE) programs have experienced enrollment decline, leading some PETE faculty to consider increasing efforts to recruit new students to their programs. This aspect of the current study sought to investigate PETE program coordinators’ perceptions of possible causes for decreased PETE enrollments as well as their role in, and barriers to, recruiting preservice teachers.Methods: Thirty-six PETE program coordinators (12 males and 24 females) participated in in-depth interviews. The data were coded using a standard interpretative approach grounded in inductive analysis and constant comparison.Results: PETE faculty members perceived declining enrollments to be related to negative public perceptions of education, low-quality K-12 physical education, academically unprepared PETE students, and restructuring programs to emphasize other kinesiology areas. Though compelled to recruit, PETE coordinators questioned their responsibility to do so and reported lacking time and training to be effective.Discussion/Conclusions: PETE coordinators favor recruiting strategies that are less time-intensive and match their academic skill set.

Assessment of economic threshold concepts in higher education

Economics educators generally agree that opportunity cost and price mechanism are economic threshold concepts. If we assess students’ higher order thinking in the academic context, we would expect a strong association between students’ demonstrated ability of applying threshold concepts in real life context and their academic achievement. In this interview study, no such association was observed. The paper argues that current economics education over-emphasises the acquisition of technical skills, at the expense of integrative understanding, resulting in the observed lack of real world relevance by economics students and contributing to the continuous decline in economics enrollment in Australian universities.

Accounting for Growth Effects of Age Structure Transition through Public Education Expenditure: New Macroeconomic Evidence from India

This article quantifies the growth effects of age structure transition through current public education expenditure. Using the National Transfer Accounts’ (NTA) First Demographic Dividend (FDD) model, growth effects are accounted by the impact of current public education expenditure on economic support ratio (ESR) and labour productivity through human capital investments. The results offer new macroeconomic evidence. Age structure transition reduces the education dependency ratio (EDR) by all levels of education but the highest in the elementary education. This impacts on a long-term decline in enrolment in elementary education where the current gross enrolment ratio (GER) is close to 100 per cent and a decline in current public education expenditure. Other things being equal, the resultant potential savings, or the availability of extra budgetary resources, is a new way of financing the investment requirements for secondary and higher education with the aim of increasing national economic growth through human capital investments. In particular, growth effects are shown to be positive, higher and longer up to 2050, if the current public education spending is reallocated more for the secondary and higher education. Surprisingly, growth effects are explained less by the ESR than labour productivity. This justifies a higher human capital investment to enhance labour productivity for attainment of higher economic growth. The afore- mentioned macroeconomic framework, results and implications are of general relevance for other developing countries in South Asia and elsewhere in the world. JEL Classification: E65, H52, J11

Performance Management in Public Higher Education: Unintended Consequences and the Implications of Organizational Diversity

Governments are increasingly using performance management systems to improve organizational accountability and effectiveness. Critics argue these systems create perverse incentives and neglect important differences in organizational values, missions, and resources. These concerns are particularly salient in public higher education as state governments apply uniform performance accountability policies across diverse institutions. A growing body of literature suggests that these policies do not improve performance, but few studies consider their potential unintended consequences or the implications of organizational differences, such as resource dependence, for implementation. By using a difference-in-differences approach, I find that performance-funding’s effects vary depending on institutions’ dependence on state funding. Institutions less dependent on state funding experience graduation rate gains, while more dependent institutions do not. I also find that implementing performance funding is associated with increased selectivity in admissions and a decline in minority enrollment. Broadly, the results suggest organizations will be more successful under performance management systems when they have greater flexibility in their resources and missions consistent with the performance regimes. The results also suggest, however, that institutions may realize performance gains at the expense of other important values.

Land conservation can mitigate freshwater ecosystem services degradation due to climate change in a semiarid catchment: The case of the Portneuf River catchment, Idaho, USA

There is increasing evidence of environmental change impacts on freshwater ecosystem services especially through land use and climate change. However, little is known about how land conservation could help mitigate adverse water-sustainability impacts. In this paper, we utilized the InVEST tool and the Residual Trends method to assess the joint effects and relative contributions of climate change and land conservation on freshwater ecosystem services in the Portneuf River catchment in Idaho, USA. We developed five hypothesized scenarios regarding gain and loss in the enrollment of Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), the largest agricultural land-retirement program in the U.S., plus riparian buffer and assessed their interactions with climate change. Results suggest that the realized water yield in the Portneuf River catchment would possibly be 56% less due to climate change and 24% less due to the decline of CRP enrollment. On the contrary, if CRP enrollment is promoted by ~30% and riparian buffer protection is implemented, the water supply reduction in the year 2050 could be changed from 56% to 26%, the total phosphorus (TP) and total nitrogen (TN) export would be reduced by 10% and 11%, and the total suspended sediment (TSS) reduced by 17%. This study suggests that increasing implementation of the CRP would likely preserve key freshwater ecosystem services and assist proactive mitigation, especially for semiarid regions vulnerable to changing climate conditions.

Spring undergrad enrollment down from previous year

Postsecondary enrollments for the spring 2018 term were at 17.8 million, a decline of 1.3 percent compared with spring 2017. Although enrollments in graduate and professional programs increased, they were outweighed by a decline in undergraduate enrollments. That's according to Current Term Enrollment Estimates Spring 2018, a report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.

Spring undergrad enrollment down compared to the previous year

Postsecondary enrollments for the spring 2018 term were at 17.8 million, a decline of 1.3 percent compared with spring 2017. Although enrollments in graduate and professional programs increased, they were outweighed by a decline in undergraduate enrollments. That's according to Current Term Enrollment Estimates Spring 2018, a report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.

Spring undergrad enrollment down from previous year

Postsecondary enrollments for the spring 2018 term were at 17.8 million, a decline of 1.3 percent compared with spring 2017. Although enrollments in graduate and professional programs increased, they were outweighed by a decline in undergraduate enrollments. That's according to Current Term Enrollment Estimates Spring 2018, a report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.

Topic-based knowledge mining of online student reviews for strategic planning in universities

Over the past few years, studies observe a continuous decline in university enrollment and retention rates resulting in millions of dollars in lost revenue. Past research shows that 95% of the students rely heavily on the positive word-of-mouth to select a college. Especially, with the advent of Web 2.0 tools, students are able to make informed decisions due to increased awareness through online reviews. Academic institutions can also leverage this information to understand and improve their students’ perception. The objective of this paper is to identify the current strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) of a university by analyzing online student reviews using text analytics. Our proposed approach integrates four different techniques: topic modeling, sentiment analysis, root cause and SWOT analyses. First, we introduce an ensemble of Latent Dirichlet Allocation (E-LDA) topic models to automatically identify the key features (topics) that are predominantly discussed by students and categorize each review sentence into the most related topic. We then detect the opinion associated with each sentence (positive, negative and neutral) using sentiment analysis. Finally, a topic-based opinion summary (TOS) for a university is established to identify its strengths and weaknesses from the students’ perspective, and the opportunities and threats are determined by analyzing the TOS of the competitors (or other similar institutions). A case study is used to illustrate the feasibility and application of the proposed approach. The results indicate that the proposed method provides an efficient and economic performance summary of a university and its competitors, and could help its leaders in recruitment and retention efforts.

Six reasons the United States will continue to lose international student market share

I suspect that many readers of this article will either dismiss the premise that colleges and universities in the United States will continue to lose international student market share or dispute the facts I list. Some may hope that the decline in international student enrollment in the United States for the fall 2017 semester was just a blip, a one‐off. Still others will blame the decline solely on the outcome of the 2016 election.

A College at the Crossroads: The Case of the College of Business Administration at Abu Dhabi University

The College of Business Administration at Abu Dhabi University, a private university in the United Arab Emirates, has been experiencing a decline in enrollment for several years. This decline in enrollment is believed to be associated with a number of internal and external factors, such as intense competition from local and international universities, aftereffects of an economic downturn in the country, fading popularity of business degrees, and many others. Despite the college obtaining Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) accreditation and implementing a number of enrollment management indicatives, the problem of low enrollment remains. Since student tuition is the main source of funds for the university, the problem of low student enrollment should be addressed swiftly.

Private Schools in Canada and the USA: Contrasts and Commonalities

Characteristics of private schools in Canada and the USA are compared using NCES Private School Universe Survey data, previously unavailable Canadian data, and selected survey results from PISA 2015. Differences are noted between curriculum levels, average enrollments, religious orientations and school autonomy. Five Canadian provinces offer direct funding to private schools whereas various US states channel funds to private schools through voucher or similar schemes. While the proportion of students attending private schools in Canada has been increasing, the growth of charter schools in the US appears to have contributed to a decline in US private school enrollments.

Modeling research universities: Predicting probable futures of public vs. private and large vs. small research universities

The future of the American academic research enterprise is considered. Data are presented that characterize the resources available for the 160 best-resourced research universities, a small subset of the 2,285 4-year, nonprofit, higher education institutions. A computational model of research universities was extended and used to simulate three strategic scenarios: status quo, steady decline in foreign graduate student enrollments, and downward tuition pressures from high-quality, online professional master’s programs. Four specific universities are modeled: large public and private, and small public and private. The former are at the top of the 160 in terms of resources, while the latter are at the bottom of the 160. The model’s projections suggest how universities might address these competitive forces. In some situations, it would be in the economic interests of these universities to restrict research activities to avoid the inherent subsidies these activities require. The computational projections portend the need for fundamental change of approaches to business for universities without large institutional resources.

Bachelor of Nursing Honours programs in Australia: Current trends and key challenges

BackgroundTo prepare nurses for a role in knowledge generation they need to engage in research training. Bachelor of Nursing (Honours) programs are a first step in this training. Developing a better understanding of current programs, their challenges and outcomes will provide an evidence base to inform curriculum development and policy making. AimThe aim of this study was to explore current Australian Bachelor of Nursing (Honours) programs in terms of their composition, delivery and number of enrolments/graduates. MethodsBachelor of Nursing Honours Coordinators or Heads of Schools of Nursing and Midwifery at Australian Universities were emailed an invitation to participate in an online survey. FindingsOf the 19 academics who responded to the survey, 15 (78.9%) reported currently offering a Bachelor of Nursing (Honours) program in their institution. A steady decline in mean enrolments was evident over recent years. There were clear differences in course delivery and assessment tasks between courses. ConclusionThis paper highlights the need to further explore Bachelor of Nursing (Honours) programs across Australia to ensure consistency in outcomes and to explore innovations in course delivery and project development. Such changes should incorporate feedback from students, supervisors, curriculum developers and professional stakeholders to ensure that programs address their various needs.

Recruit, retain students in a difficult market

Is your institution or your division for adult learners struggling with enrollment numbers? If so, you're not alone. Spring 2017 undergraduate enrollment across postsecondary education was down 1.9 percent compared to spring 2016, according to National Student Clearinghouse Research Center figures, although graduate enrollments have risen slightly. And adult learners contributed most heavily to the decline. Among students over age 24, enrollment dropped 3.6 percent for the year. That followed a year‐to‐year enrollment decline of 3.4 percent from spring 2015 to spring 2016, and a drop of 3.6 percent from spring 2014 to spring 2015 (learn more at http://bit.ly/2gxOtXt).

Looking Within or Reaching Out?: The Effects of Religion on Private School Enrollments in an Era of School Choice

AbstractThe proliferation of school choice policies has expanded schooling options for parents. While this trend coincides with a decline in private school enrollment, it is unclear how these policies affect enrollment among various religious traditions and religiosity. We study the impact of religion and school choice initiatives on the decision to enroll in different types of private schools in this new era. We evaluate two concurrent theories on the role of religion in the enrollment trends of private schools. Religious school enrollment may be motivated by (1) the desire to transmit a religious social identity, or (2) the secular goods associated with religious-based education. Using state-level data, we test these two explanations by estimating fixed effects regression models predicting private school market shares between 1993–2011 among different religious groups. We find support for both theories, particularly for a robust private school market aided by school choice policies.