Excerpt from the Dayton Daily News
Ohio’s public universities and colleges are seeing a decline in overall enrollment, whether compared to last year or five years ago, as a pandemic trend worsens.
In 2022, 8% fewer students are attending Ohio’s public, main-campus public universities compared to 2017; 24% fewer students are attending public university branch campuses, like Miami University’s Middletown campus or Wright State’s Lake campus; and 1% fewer students are attending community colleges across the state, according to the Ohio Department of Higher Education, which oversees Ohio’s public colleges and universities.
“Ohio has — and will have through much of this decade — fewer graduating high school students,” said Jeff Robinson, spokesman for the Ohio Department of Higher Education. “In addition, the pandemic caused some students to re-evaluate their postsecondary options, with some opting to delay postsecondary education.”
The one-year decline for main campus public universities was only 2.5% of overall students from fall 2021 to fall 2022, but community colleges saw a much larger decline of nearly 9%. Regional campuses in Ohio saw an 8.5% decline in the number of students between fall 2021 and fall 2022.
With fewer college students, fewer people may be trained and qualified to take key jobs in Ohio, like nurses, teachers, police officers and manufacturing technicians. It could also drive down Ohio’s tax revenues, as higher-paying jobs often require a college degree in 2022.
