Connecticut state college and university officials say a $125.5 million investment by the state should be enough money to stem a four-year enrollment slide, but it will require a new approach to higher education that focuses more on online education and catering to non-traditional students.
“As a system looking for enrollment, we understand the problems with a declining market,” said Gregory Gray, president of the Board of Regents for Higher Education, who is spearheading efforts to get more students at Connecticut state colleges. “Our plan [to boost enrollment] is quite ambitious.”
After reaching an all-time peak in 2010, enrollment at Connecticut’s 17 community colleges, state universities and the online-only Charter Oak State College dropped to 92,989 this academic year, down 4.3 percent from its peak and its lowest level since 2008.
The situation is particularly troublesome at Central, Southern, Eastern, and Western Connecticut State Universities where combined enrollment reached its lowest level in 14 years.
The problem the Connecticut State College & University System (CSUS) faces is fewer high school seniors graduating in Connecticut and that number keeps declining at 1.8 percent annually, Gray said. At the same time, a new study by Niche.com found that more than half of Connecticut’s high school graduates leave the state to attend college. That makes Connecticut the third largest exporter of college students in the country.
Because state schools are losing that traditional student market, they must work harder to attract more of those pupils while finding new pools of students to enroll, take classes, and pay tuition, Gray said.
Meanwhile, UConn — as the beneficiary of such legislative programs as the $1.5 billion Next Generation Connecticut — keeps hitting new enrollment records with each passing year. UConn’s 2013 enrollment was 30,474, an increase of 1.4 percent since 2010, when CSUS schools began losing students.
The crux of the plan to rebound interest now and in the future is the Transform CSUS 2020 program, which was pitched to the legislature as a $120 million initiative to increase marketing, further educate the current workforce, cater to industry needs such as developing more advanced manufacturing workers, and modernize academic offerings with online and other flexible approaches.
After running into trouble with the budget, the legislature only allotted $102 million toward the plan but did kick in an extra $23.5 million in bonding to expand the advanced manufacturing center at Asnuntuck Community College in Enfield.
“That is $125.5 million we didn’t have before,” Gray said.
With this money, CSUS aims to hit 100,000 enrollees by 2018, said Gray. The system also needs to hit a consistent 70 percent retention rate, up from the variable 65-75 percent rate it has experienced in recent years.
The first step to boost enrollment is the Go Back to Get Ahead initiative, which provides up to nine credit hours tuition-free for students to finish partially completed degrees. CSUS also plans by the fall 2015 semester to expand its early college program to all 17 schools so Connecticut high school seniors can take college courses for free.
As colleges search for enrollment, the schools must keep an eye on costs so CSUS is an affordable option for all families, Gray said. The Board of Regents proved this commitment, Gray said, when it increased tuition at the community colleges by only 2 percent this year.
“That is very minimal,” Gray said. “We can no longer allow higher education costs to go through the sky.”
Boosting online education
Meantime, online enrollment needs to play a bigger role, with Charter Oak taking the lead on the Go Back to Get Ahead initiative, Gray said. More of the CSUS schools need to work with Charter Oak to establish online options, with the hope that the system can expand its customer base beyond Connecticut’s borders.
Charter Oak, with an enrollment of 1,606 at the start of the fall 2013 semester, expects enrollment to jump to 3,000 in the upcoming fall semester because of the Go Back to Get Ahead initiative, said Ed Klonoski, president of Charter Oak.
Charter Oak will be the major beneficiary of the program because it caters to older professionals finishing their degrees, Klonoski said. The average age for a student there is 39.
“Students don’t choose us because they like computers. They choose us because it is convenient and because it is the only way they can further their education while taking care of their families,” Klonoski said.
Charter Oak will help the other 16 schools expand their online offerings by being a design house for their courses. Because of its learn-from-anywhere approach, 30 percent of Charter Oak’s students are from outside Connecticut.
In moving curriculum online, the idea is to create classes that are designed for student interest and industry needs while keeping the heavy lifting for the online mechanics off faculty, allowing professors to focus on teaching, Klonoski said. “If you are going to lower the cost for students, you are going to have to lower the capital costs, and that is what online options do,” Klonoski said. “Every new program should be delivered first online.”
Boosting advanced manufacturing
The other major beneficiary of the Transform initiative will be Asnuntuck, with the $23.5 million expanded manufacturing center. The money will upgrade a 17,000-square-foot facility that can handle 220 students to a 45,000-square-foot facility for 600 students.
“We are looking at the whole population of incumbent workers, new workers, and displaced workers,” said Frank Gulluni, director of the Asnuntuck Manufacturing Technology Center.
The Asnuntuck center will add additive manufacturing, metrology, and electromechanical manufacturing programs to its current offerings of welding, fabrication, electronics, and computer numerical control (CNC) training. The school will have more classrooms and computer labs, with the ability to start with students as young as sixth graders so they are ready to enter the workforce as quickly as possible after high school graduation, Gulluni said.
“We know in two to three years there is going to be a large demand for additive manufacturing technicians, so we need to prepare for that,” Gulluni said.
Central Connecticut State University’s (CCSU) goals for enrollment are congruent with the Transform goals, but the school already has launched its own initiatives to recruit more students, said Mark McLaughlin, CCSU associate vice president of marketing and communications. The school’s 11,865 student enrollment this past fall was down 4.9 percent from 2010.
Affordable tuition
CCSU, which is based in New Britain, is expanding its online courses but is concerned about how effective non-classroom style learning is, so the university is exploring hybrid programs that use the best from both worlds, McLaughlin said.
To keep its $8,877 in-state, undergraduate tuition affordable, CCSU increased its student aid from $53 million to $91 million over a five-year period, McLaughlin said. Over the same time period, the university’s endowment increased from $21.8 million to $47.7 million, which hopefully will lead to more stable finances over the long term.
CCSU still sees itself as a residential/commuter school and plans to increase on-campus housing by 25 percent to add to the 2,000 students who currently reside there, McLaughlin said. CCSU also wants to retain more students and increase its 52 percent graduation rate.
“With these changes, we believe we will increase our enrollments significantly,” McLaughlin said.
Southern Connecticut State University is facing even more challenges, as its enrollment of 10,804 students in the fall semester was the lowest since the Board of Regents started tracking the information.
The school is adding more online programs, including online-only graduate programs, said Kimberly Crone, SCSU associate vice president for enrollment management.
SCSU also will strive to maintain and improve its 78 percent retention rate for first year students, Crone said.
