The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center released its analysis of the current trends in post-secondary education this week. Broadly speaking at the national level, there have been large year over year increases in 2-year and for profit 4-year colleges (typically online colleges). While, across the US, nonprofit 4-years instituations did well in enrollment last fall, however, Ohio schools lagged behind. Gains in freshmen enrollment at Ohio schools was primarily made by the large public institutions (schools like Ohio State).
The light blue line in the above figure is private non-profit 4-year institutions, like Wittenberg (essentially no growth). The top blue line and the orange lines that show an increase are public 4-year and public 2-year schools.
The second finding in the research that is important to look at is where the students are coming from. The figure below shows that information.
As you can see in this figure, the northeast of the US saw declines or slow grow in student populations, while the greatest growth came from the south and western states. When you combine the percentage growth numbers with the base number of students in each states, the southern states are generating the largest number of potential students for 4-year programs. Ohio's population of 2024 freshmen increased by 1%.
Analyzing 4-year college fields of study, there are some additional important trends. The chart below shows the trends in enrollment in Ohio 4-year colleges by intended major.
What this chart reveals is a sharp decrease in liberal arts and sciences enrollment, while business, health, and engineering showed the largest increases. This is a reflection of demand for students that choose to enroll in an Ohio 4-year college.
What is the Broader Trend?
Since the COVID pandemic, 4-year colleges have been in "recovery mode." This is the first year since the pandemic that the post-secondary marketplace has demonstrated good resilience. With that said, this upward trend is likely to level out to an equalibrium point in the short term. In the longer term, national census data and information from the US Department of Education indicates that enrollment will decline sharply as the high school aged population declines in the coming decade.
What Does this Mean for Wittenberg?
This is a one year snapshot, so it is important to put it in the context of broader trends. Broader trends do show declining interest in liberal arts majors amongst incoming freshmen, however, other data show increases in demand for careers in software development and data analytics, public administration, social services, and education (in addition to the data in the above table). Many of these careers are writing intensive, require strong communications skills, and are enhanced by a core curriculum that stresses multi-discipliary and experiential learning, and internships. This includes the majors related to business, health, and engineering.
Wittenberg's Connections Curriculum (https://www.wittenberg.edu/connections) is well suited to these students, so the next step is to drop back to the key points of how and where we are recruiting, and how we describe the differentiation of a Wittenberg experience to other choices in the market.
The WIN Foundation is working on both strategies for improving enrollment, as well as adjustments to curriculum, courses, and marketing which will improve the distrinctiveness of Wittenberg's programs.
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