2 Michigan universities facing enrollment challenges know they have to make big changes

David Jesse | Detroit Free Press

It was a gray, rainy, cold late-October afternoon, the kind of day best suited for a fire and a cup of coffee, or if you had to be at work, a day not to be jealous of those with a window in their office.

For about 75 people — a smattering of students, but mostly faculty and staff — sitting around a series of round tables in a large meeting room on Western Michigan University's Kalamazoo campus, the first sentences from Edward Montgomery didn't make the day burst into sunshine.

"We have some facts and figures for you," said Montgomery, Western's president. "Some of them will be depressing."

The same tone of that presentation could have been — and likely has been — repeated at a number of Michigan's public universities, particularly the regional universities.

It's easy to see why universities are struggling.

Shrinking enrollment, thanks to a smaller overall pool of traditional-age college students, has led to fewer credit hours being taken, which has led to less tuition money rolling in. Tuition dollars, because public universities in recent decades have gone from being largely funded by the state to being funded by tuition, are the lifeblood of today's colleges. Loss of tuition means cuts. Making cuts means it's hard to recruit students. Fewer students means even less tuition money.

Michigan's universities are doing all sorts of things to try to stem the tide. They're stepping up recruiting out of state. They are offering steep discounts on their tuition sticker price. They are adding programs in the hot careers of the moment.

And some are thinking about how they do college.

'No magic pot of money'

It would be easy to look at the picture Tony Proudfoot, Western's vice president for marketing and strategic communication, was painting for those gathered at in the meeting room and head right for the nearest bar and stay there for a long time.

"The public is screaming at us: 'You need to change, you need to adapt,' " he said, noting a 5% enrollment drop this school year and a 10% enrollment drop over three years. "People vote with their feet. If they aren't here, we lose revenue. There is no magic pot of money."

Thanks to data collection, Western knows when prospective students don't chose to attend, 21% end up at Michigan State University, 8% end up at Grand Valley and 4% end up at Central Michigan University.

So, it might make sense to try to shape Western to become more like MSU. Not so fast, Proudfoot said.

"We cannot be diet Michigan State — instead we have to stand for ourselves."

In doing so, Western must change the perception people hold of it.

"We are seen as a backup school," Proudfoot said.

But the university hopes to change that with a "Big Idea" developed with input from all over Western's campus. In short, the university wants to be known as a place where students can explore careers, define passions and be cared for holistically.

"We will demonstrate care by aiming to be the most responsive university in the country," Proudfoot said.

What does that mean? It means making it easier for students to change majors, for example, Proudfoot said.

"The nature of work is changing," he told the Free Press before the start of the town hall. "Our students need the skills to deal with that. When students change majors, we act surprised. It happens all the time. We need to make that easy, to give students the ability to change."

It also means exposing students to careers earlier in their college career and also doing a better job advising.

The Big Idea "is not a thing, it's a way of being," he said.

'Meet students where they are'

When Montgomery arrived at Western in the fall of 2017 to take over as president, he came in with an unique perspective — his son was a student.

He saw a university "that had excellent programs in pockets of the university."

As he worked his way around the institution, learning more about it, he also came to the realization that the "context the university was operating in" was shifting and Western needed to change. Part of that change was a change in attitude from saying to prospective students "this is who Western is" and you can join us to asking how Western can help students get to where they wanted to be.

"We want to be flexible, to meet students where they are," he told the Free Press. "We want to look at the whole student."

He doesn't want to be like 7-Eleven, with a cookie cutter store on every corner.

Western is rolling out its plans at a tough time for colleges across the nation in terms of enrollment.

Unduplicated enrollments are down about 2 million in the nation's college and universities from their peak in 2011, according to research released in December by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.

Among the study's findings:

Public four-year institutions’ enrollment dropped by 97,426 students, or 1.2%.

Public two-year institutions declined by 77,092 students, or 1.4%.

Private nonprofit four-year institutions fell by 22,027 students, or 0.6%.

Private for-profit four-year institutions decreased by 15,711, students or 2.1%.

“With every institutional sector experiencing enrollment declines this fall, the higher education industry has now shed more than 2 million students since its peak in 2011 and the unduplicated count has fallen below 18 million for the first time. Most of the pain hits the Midwest and Northeast, even as some states in the South and West saw modest growth,” Doug Shapiro, the group's executive research director said in the statement.

In Michigan, fall enrollment this year was just over 482,000 students. That's down 2.9% from the previous year. In 2018, that figure was nearly 497,000 students, down 3.8% from the previous year. In fall 2017, there were 516,291, down 3.7% from the previous year.

The top state declines come from:

Alaska (-10.6%)

Florida (-5.3%)

Arkansas (-4.9%)

Missouri (-4.4%)

Vermont (-4.4%),

Wyoming (-4.4%)

'I think we need to grow'

One week after Western Michigan held its town hall, a crowd of Central Michigan University staff, administrators, board members and some students trooped through a light dusting of snow into an auditorium on the Mount Pleasant campus for Central President Bob Davies' state of the university speech.

After highlighting various exciting programs and students, Davies began talking about a new strategic plan that would stretch into 2030.

He also acknowledged the reality of the situation — Central's enrollment is down by about 20% from the fall of 2009 and its credit hours taken have fallen from 691,000 in fiscal 2011 to 557,000 in fiscal 2019.

"I think we need to grow," Davies told the Free Press in a phone conversation a couple of weeks after his speech. "There's capacity on multiple fronts. I think we have the location — we are centrally located. We should look for stable growth."

Central is doing some immediate things, like adding staff in Detroit and taking a hard look at how it awards financial aid to students.

But Central, like Western, wants to make mindset changes.

"We need to be nimble and flexible," he said. That also means taking a new tact with a strategic plan for the university.

"Most strategic plans at universities are about the same," he said. "We want to be different. We want to think transformational. We want to have a strategic mindset."

That means finding the correct niche, he told those gathered for his speech and then again in his conversation with the Free Press.

"I think our niche is that we are a community. We are about small classes. We are about individuals being challenges academically and intellectually; and, they need to be ready to respond to those challenges, and not just be part of a group that kind of goes along."

Contact David Jesse: 313-222-8851 or djesse@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter: @reporterdavidj