Excerpt from the Dayton Daily News
Area universities are competing for students with new recruitment efforts as the number of high school graduates is expected to plummet in the next 13 years.
The number of traditional students heading to college is dropping. High school graduates will decline by 140,000 nationally and 13,000 in Ohio by 2032, surpassing the number of students that make up the undergraduate student bodies at Wittenberg University, the University of Dayton and Wright State University, according to the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education.
“Most institutions across the U.S. are dependent on the revenue brought in by tuition, so oftentimes what you’re seeing now more than ever is alignment between what happens in the admission office, enrollment management and the rest of the university community,” said Susan Schaurer, associate vice president for strategic enrollment management at Miami University.
Miami University and Wright State leaders also said they’re putting resources into the transfer side of recruitment, partnering with community colleges to present their universities as an option while students are enrolled at two-year colleges.
Wright State is adding two new full-time employees to its transfer staff, including one transfer partnership assistant director who will solely work on creating stronger partnerships with its community college partners.
Other students may not want the traditional experiencing of going to a physical campus for class, and would prefer to take a smaller workload or a full-time load from home online, said Paul Carney, vice president of student success.
“We want to expand the number of online opportunities for our nontraditional population,” Carney said. “We’re taking some degree programs where some might have been on site and some might have been online and we’re making them fully online.”
- Read more in the Dayton Daily News
