Disruption and reconfiguration at regional public universities

       While most flagship state universities from Rutgers and PennState in the East to Florida State in the Southland to UCLA on the West Coast, are flourishing, regional public colleges and universities in many parts of the nation are in crisis mode.
       Consider for example Western Illinois University.  The Illinois legislature is involved in an 11th month old budget standoff.  Already 150 employees, including non-tenured faculty have been laid off.  Declining enrollments at the school reflect the drop in Illinois's population... last year alone .2 percent. WIU's student body has declined from around 11,000 to around 9,000 over the past decade.

       How to replace the lost numbers?  Flagship schools can recruit from around the country.  Their reputations as sports powerhouses give them brand recognition.  And their facilities and amenities often match the best that private higher ed can offer, and at a lower sticker price, even if out-of-state tuition is significantly higher then in-state price tags.
       But that's a difficult strategy to pull off, if you are a regional public institution, according to an article in yesterday's Chronicle of Higher Education.  Traditionally drawing upon and serving a local student population, and frequently being primarily commuter schools, these universities typically must rely on intensifying regional recruitment.
      Additional strategies include:

• Targeting potential transfer students from community colleges in the neighborhood.
• Establishing a presence on these two-year institutions' own campuses.
• Developing more robust programs for non-traditional students.
• Enabling high school seniors, who have completed their core requirements, to pick up college credits during their last year of K-12 education.
• Venturing into the advancement arena by strengthening their alumni base and competing toe-to-toe with private colleges for donor gifts, as well as grants.

      The more these regional publics become players in the advancement arena, the more the line grays between the public and private sectors of higher ed.  As an acquaintance of mine from the regional-public sector once said to me, "We used to be state supported; now we are little more than state located."  And the money has to come from somewhere.

      To the extent that such student-recruitment and advancement efforts succeed, in what is today essentially a zero-sum game (albeit recruiting of non-traditional students and fund raising among one's own alumni may be mining new ore), the reaction of these regional publics to their disruption will be at the expense of the private, non-profit colleges in those regions.