HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Pennsylvania Universities Expect Declining Enrollment. “The projected loss of roughly 1,500 students is modest for a system with more than 118,000 students, and not every campus says it expects to see a decline. Still, it is a significant departure from a trend that over 14 years lifted State System enrollment by 28 percent, from 93,711 to 119,513 students. And it is adding uncertainty to campuses already dealing with rising costs and a state appropriation that is 20 percent smaller than two years ago. Student tuition and fees, along with state funds, are the two principal sources of State System revenue. If both take a hit simultaneously, there is only so much schools can do to offset the loss.”
Who could have seen this coming?
UPDATE: Sallie Mae Survey Highlights Changing Marketplace, Students.
College administrators are justifiably worried about whether they’re going to be able to balance their budgets in a changing economic landscape, and a survey released by Sallie Mae last month didn’t do much to put them at ease.
The report’s headline finding is that spending on colleges — a number that includes parent and student income and savings, federal and private loans, grants and scholarships, and money from friends and relatives — by traditional-aged students and their families dropped over the past two years, a 13 percent decrease between 2009-10 and 2011-12.
A 13 percent drop in spending across all institutions types would represent a dramatic shift in the market indicating that large numbers of students and families had chosen less-expensive institutions over costlier ones, opted to live at home instead of on campus, or made other choices that cut their own spending — and, in turn, colleges’ revenues. That is revenue that tuition-dependent institutions of all types would have a hard time replacing. . . .
Despite its headline-grabbing nature, the Sallie Mae survey doesn’t paint quite as dramatic picture as it seems on first read. That’s partly because the two-year drop begins after a large spike in spending in the 2009-10 school year that coincided with the recession. The study’s findings are also tempered by other trends such as increases in college-going rates and shifts in who pays for college. While the findings of the Sallie Mae study still portend financial difficulties for some colleges in the years ahead, they don’t signal quite the sea change that they seem to at first glance.
Hmm. Well, possibly.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Applications are up at Illinois, though.