The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center (NSCRC) is the research arm of the National Student Clearinghouse, a non-profit that provides reporting and research services to their 3,500 partner colleges and universities. In general, the NSCRC collects data from its partner colleges to help them with strategy, policy and improved student outcomes.
We like the comprehensive nature of the data gathered by the NSCRC and think it can provide students and their families with insights into potential advantages when applying to flagship state universities.
With seniors working on the applications for state schools with August submission window openings and juniors trying to round out their college lists we thought it would be a good time to highlight some of the trends that have emerged from the NSCRC’s recent look at enrollment data. The NSCRC’s spring 2024 data release showed undergraduate enrollment levels increase 2.5% nationwide, good news for higher education, which has been seeing declining enrollment trends. While the increase of 1.2% seen by public four-year universities lagged the overall data, it was also generally positive, breaking a negative enrollment trend seen since 2017.
It is worth remembering that state universities are largely funded by the state they are in and that an important part of their funding is the money they bring in from the students enrolled at their schools. From that standpoint, positive enrollment trends are important to schools and the state boards that oversee them.
Limits on out of state enrollment levels can create a ceiling for out of state (OOS) students at some schools but at many others, negative in-state enrollment trends make higher fee paying out of state students more attractive. In brief, OOS students are seen as a way to help ease the pressure of negative enrollment trends. Because of this, we like to look at the states where in-state enrollment levels have lagged, and financial pressure is likely building. These states can become good targets for students looking to gain acceptance at top public colleges.
While most of the country saw improving undergraduate enrollment trends in the past year West Virginia (1.5%), Washington (1.3%), Indiana (1.2%), Pennsylvania (1%) and Oregon (.6%) all saw declines. Of some interest is that articles discussing financial pressure in the college systems of all five states have been written recently. We feel that this pressure might make OOS applicants more attractive to the public systems in each of the states.
While we are reluctant to rely on rankings to determine school quality, we believe that the U.S. News, The Princeton Review, Niche and QS Rankings all have some interesting attributes and together, paint a decent picture of school quality. The University of Washington and Purdue University are the two state schools mentioned in all four surveys (top 25 for U.S. based surveys of public universities and top 100 of international surveys). While not at the same level, Penn State, Indiana University and The University of Pittsburgh also did fairly well in a number of surveys.
In an environment where people worry about the cost of college and ever-decreasing acceptance rates we believe that it might be a good time for those looking for a big state school experience with quality academics and outcomes to give the above-mentioned schools a look.
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