Yes there was a 20k jump between Fall 2019 to Fall 2020 which would not be due to TO since Fall 2020 wasn’t affected by TO.
I do know it was around that time that UC’s were starting to gain a reputation for being much harder to predict. Part of that was the increase in out-of-state admissions but that had been happening for some time so the unpredictability didn’t seem to be due solely for this reason. I wouldn’t be surprised if quite a few guidance counselors started to suggest ASU as a go-to safety for CA kids since it is part of WUE and has proximity in its favor. I have noticed a similar uptick in Oregon State as a safety recently. UC Boulder is also a go to safety but that had been around awhile. Why the sudden in 2020 uptick? Not sure. It could be due to employees being counted in the numbers but that would mean it’s either a new policy or there is a sudden increase in number of employees that are attending. Possible but seems unlikely too unless it was a new policy. Could be several factors contributing. Maybe UC Boulder became less of a safety, for instance and ASU opened up a new facility with an increase in employees. Could be something else entirely such as the current tuition guarantee could have been introduced then.
I thought that WUE not including the main campus was a recent change?
I think schools sometimes offer a good deal which changes over time. For instance, I believe U Arizona seemed to adjust their tuition guaranteed rate upward recently. Lots of schools were more likely to offer merit at some point but those deals seem to go away in time.
ASU is still a good deal for CA even without WUE. And yes, CA has been losing numbers which started in 2021 I believe. Not sure though if this impacts kids applying to university as I think many who are leaving are young families who can’t afford rent or people retiring so I am not sure we can conclude the number of students graduating high school and applying to four year colleges in California has declined. I am really surprised by the decline in two year colleges since there is a good UC transfer pathway that is obviously not being utilized by those students who prefer to go to ASU or Oregon or UC Boulder.
In 2010, most CSUs were impacted, meaning that they could not admit all applicants who met CSU baseline requirements. Now, most CSUs are not impacted except for nursing. So fewer students now need to take the transfer path to CSU than in 2010. Also, in 2010, more may have chosen to start at community college for cost reasons.
Of course, in 2010, there were news reports of community college courses filling up within minutes of registration opening.
And, let’s not forget ASU has a bricks and mortar location now, in LA. Undergrad degrees, for now, are limited to more creative majors such as fashion, film, etc.
This is very interesting but I wonder if the first prediction made which was that college enrollment will increase which will offset any demographic change to the population will come to pass.
As ucbalumnus mentioned, most CSU’s were impacted in 2010 but now they are not. Does this mean there has been a drop in enrollment for many campuses or have they expanded facilities to accommodate more students or are some of the kids who would have previously enrolled in CSU much more likely now to go to a UC which then has the trickle down effect of students who previously would have gone to a community college finding spots at a CSU instead? In that case, enrollment would drop in community colleges but would still remain the same or increase overall. I am not sure that’s the case in California though it might be.
There is much data on the interwebs. Even though more CA students are completing A-G requirements, CA college going rates are below US average (as seen in the PPIC report I linked above.)
Some college going headwinds include all the things talked about on many other threads and in the media: Perceived ROI of college (even though net college tuition/costs have been declining for at least a decade), relatively low rates of males who are choosing to attend college, affordability an issue for some families even with federal/state aid, fear of educational debt, many companies dropping degree requirements, increased minimum wage in certain areas, increased availability of online degrees, etc.
Total CSU enrollment (includes grad level, so need to make that adjustment for each year if one just wants undergrad.)
CCC enrollment is significantly down over the last 15 years or so. When looking at CCC data it helps to separate it by age (not so much concern if older adults are attending less, as compared to 18-21 year olds.)
Enrollment has plummeted at California’s community colleges.
From a peak of 2.8 million students in 2009, enrollment now stands at around 1.8 million.
While this trend accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic, enrollment was trending down for many years. This drop is attributable to a number of explanations, including demographic changes, higher demand for workers in the labor market, the perceived lack of value of a college education, and other hypotheses that often fit preconceived narratives of peoplenattempting to influence higher education policy (such as colleges aren’t flexible enough and practitioners are stuck in the status quo).
Thanks for those links. There’s a lot of information there to digest.
This would be for those who qualify for aid though as the sticker prices are much higher than they were in 2010. For many families, the prices have skyrocketed with net prices being irrelevant. It’s one thing I dislike about rankings that take into account net price as it assumes everyone is paying that price when in fact many are not. It would be far better if the ratings asked the reader what the cost would be for each school they are interested in and then provide personal rankings based on their cost. If not personal cost, then something like a ball park figure of the family’s expected financial contribution towards college.
I think before 2010, many believed that college would be a ticket to a good job but then students graduated into a recession and students couldn’t find employment beyond Uber driver, Starbucks barista etc. with huge college loans to pay off. I expect it has soured many on college. I think they also have good reason to be soured because the curriculum at many colleges are mismatched with what many students are actually seeking, which is a place to learn skills for the workforce rather than pontificate on the nature of existence. Not to say the latter doesn’t have its place in society but when the goal is 40% of the population achieving a bachelor’s, many would argue that there just isn’t a need for that many pontificators. However, many schools still seem to use the kind of curriculum developed at a time when far fewer people obtained degrees (in the link you sent they specify 11% of the adult population in CA). Back then, the degree would often manifest into a job but that wasn’t usually the goal as jobs could be had without degrees. Now though far more students are there because they want assurance of a good-paying job at the end of it all which is where the mismatch lies. That’s why I think areas like engineering and nursing are so impacted at the California publics as those types of majors are far more likely to manifest into guaranteed employment. If some of the CSU’s would focus more on skills that would tie in directly not necessarily to a specific job but to the kind of skills employers want, I wouldn’t be surprised if they could turn their slumping enrollment numbers around.
Interestingly, test blind policy doesn’t seem to have helped enrollment numbers though it’s possible it has helped move students from community college to the CSU’s and some of those students into UC’s. Has there been any information on a new standardized test for the UC’s? There was talk of it being developed for 2025 but haven’t heard much about it since.
Some families, especially those from high cost of living areas, can be impacted by both federal and institutional financial aid methodologies.
Regardless, a family’s budget is often the primary constraint on a most students’ college lists, and net cost is not irrelevant. The issue is that a student can’t know projected merit aid at many schools by running NPCs, so merit hunters have to apply to many colleges. I get the net price issue (not in USNWR rankings which is really the only one people care about, net price is a part of WSJ methodology), but people can see net price data for a given school by income range in IPEDs/college navigator…all the typical caveats apply: “typical” assets, parents who aren’t divorced, parents who don’t own a business, etc.
I wouldn’t have expected test blind to increase enrollment. Budget and A-G completion are far more important factors in enrollment. I also wouldn’t underestimate the impact of high minimum wages in some areas…when a student can leave HS and make $18-20 per hour in an entry job, plenty are happy to not pursue further education for that.
I expect that is dead forever, I don’t think anyone was really seriously considering doing that. Thoughts @ucbalumnus?
The ranking where ROI is reported - that might be WSJ - but I think there might be others so not sure it’s necessarily WSJ or not. The problem with those rankings is that many schools that might cost a family far more ie. full price seem to have a good ROI due to the low net price reported but this is due to one’s need so this won’t necessarily be anywhere close to the cost for a particular student.
For merit, I also don’t know how knowing net cost is relevant though I really don’t know much about merit chasing. The problem is that lots of schools have a low net cost but give no merit aid at all. Again I could be missing something here. I’m not familiar with using College Navigator/iPEDs data for figuring out merit awards but what I would recommend for merit would be to look for lists that report average merit award and then the percent of students who get merit. The only other way I know to look for merit is through lists of schools that offer students national merit scholarships or other types of guaranteed merit based on GPA etc. Again though, I am not that knowledgeable so if I am missing something with regard to net price, I stand corrected.
I looked up the colleges that have had the largest changes in applications following COVID test optional. I compared applications in Fall 2021 to max of Fall 2020 and Fall 2019. By this measure, ASU was only a 15% increase, since the bulk of increase occurred from Fall 2019 → 2020, rather than from 2020 → 2021. Among colleges that I expect most on this forum would have heard of, the largest increases were:
U Maryland – 52% increase (77%/22% Submitting Scores → 34%/9%)
Among all 4-year colleges, the median change during this period was a 4% decrease in applications, with a 25th to 75th percentile range of 17% decrease to 8% increase. The colleges with notable decreases were dominated by smaller and less familiar names, such as less selective directional publics and small privates. For example, West Alabama had an 80% decrease. Few if any HYPSM… (non-LAC) type private colleges had a decrease in applications. However, there were a few significant decreases when dropping a few steps in selectivity, such as Lehigh and RPI.
Breaking it down by 2019 admit rate, the median changes were as follows. Once you get more than ~30% admit rate, decreases in applications became more common than increases. Lehigh and RPI were both above this threshold.
Less than 10% Admit Rate – 17% Increase in applications
10-20% Admit Rate – 12% Increase in applications
20-30% Admit Rate – 9% Increase in applications
30-40% Admit Rate – 1% Decrease in applications
40-50% Admit Rate – 6% Decrease in applications
50-60% Admit Rate – 12% Decrease in applications
Do some differences emerge with state flagships? For instance, Arizona State and U Arizona are both state flagships but they also have high admit rates and yet we know Arizona State increased with apps for possibly various reasons.
I am wondering about state flagships that have higher than 30% admit rate such as University of Utah, Iowa State, Oregon State rather than regionals such as Western Washington. It seems as if regionals had large drops in enrollment along with community colleges but wondering if state flaghips that are not renowned follow the regional trend or because they are state flagships, they have managed to be more impervious to these declines. I would guess the latter but not sure.
These 3 colleges have a good mix. One of the colleges had a large increase in applications. One had a large decrease. And one had no change.
Utah – 25% decrease
Iowa State – <1% change
Oregon State – 33% increase
There is a good amount of inconsistency like above, but the majority of well known, large flagships had an increase in applications, including ones with >30% admit rate. There was a notable correlation with college size. Giant flagships were often above the median stats listed above. Small colleges were often below the median stats listed above.
What I find interesting is not that MIT is on this list since I would have expected MIT and Caltech to have had quite an increase in apps as they had some of the highest test scores before TO, so with TO, one could see applicants suddenly apply that wouldn’t have felt they could in a test required situation. However, MIT still had quite a few submit and that combination of high increase in applications but not that high of a drop in numbers submitting a test is interesting. There are more submissions of tests by raw numbers after the TO policy than before. This was not the case with the Cornell numbers you provided previously though some of that could be attributed to some test blind schools though that doesn’t seem to be the entire explanation for the drop in test submission numbers. Likely for MIT almost everyone who applies, would still submit a test if they could manage to get one done since their scores were already very high. There would most likely also have been an increase in applications between 2020 and 2021 which might explain why test submissions increased once TO occurred.
