Kent State sees increase in enrollment interest despite recent overall decrease

Since spring of 2020, college enrollment has been on the decline across the country. 

According to NPR, there’s 1.3 million fewer students enrolled in college today than in fall 2020. Kent State enrollment data lists just over 22,000 undergraduate students enrolled in the fall 2020 semester. Fall 2021 had over 21,000, and the current fall 2022 semester lists 21,000 undergraduates enrolled on the lower end.

The Ohio Department of Higher Education works to promote higher education to high school students, as well as implement the governor’s strategies to increase enrollment, degree programs and financial aid.

“These are not necessarily sustaining trends yet,” ODHE Chancellor Randy Gardner said. “I think it’s a good sign that students realize that higher education is important. And we’re going to try to build on this momentum.”

Gardner said the main challenge in Ohio, and most of the Midwest, is a decline in high school graduates due to differing demographic factors. College Credit Plus is a program where high schools can partner with colleges and universities to get college credit while in high school.

“We’re trying to do more with College Credit Plus, getting students to promote more affordability through College Credit Plus [and] getting them some credits so that they get a good head start on their college career,” Gardner said.

Kent State saw an increase in enrollment this semester, but overall enrollment is still down, according to Mark Ledoux, director of enrollment management research analytics at Kent State.

“If you look at some of the national research, we’re seeing that students are not necessarily choosing immediately to go to college after graduating from high school,” Ledoux said. “There are a lot of opportunities

employment-wise for students, especially in the service sector, where students are going directly to jobs as opposed to going to college.”

Gardner said while Ohio has a good high school graduation rate compared to the rest of the country, there are fewer high school students in Ohio.

Using a Customer Relationship Management System, Ledoux and his department look at and store data composed of potential students and their interest in Kent State. The enrollment and admissions offices use a combination of in-person and online campus information resources.

“I think we’re seeing a lot of interest from students and we’re really trying to put as many opportunities out there [so] that we can interact with students,” Ledoux said.

One of these opportunities is the tuition guarantee, which is a policy that confirms incoming student’s tuition rates will stay the same as the year they came to campus, as there is an increase every year ranging from 1% to 4.6%.

Gardner said this policy is another way to aid students in staying enrolled in college, so they can plan out their finances ahead of time without surprises or increases.

“Ohio net price costs have gone down in the last 10 years, where the rest of the Midwest have gone up,” Gardner said. “There’s been some significant work done to try to make education as affordable as possible.”

On the state-wide level, the Ohio College Comeback Compact offers debt forgiveness and transcript release for students who dropped out before finishing their degree, who choose to re-enroll in one of the participating universities.

“We try to encourage them to come back even if they have debt,” Gardner said. “We try to work through those issues and there are four Northeast universities and four Northeast community colleges that have partnered together to do this work.”

The universities involved are Youngstown State University, the University of Akron, Kent State University and Cleveland State University. Among the community colleges are Lorain County Community College, Lakeland Community College, Stark State Community College and Cuyahoga Community College.

While there aren’t concrete results yet, Gardner said he hopes this will provide additional boosts in enrollment. 

Another strategy Ledoux and his team have seen to be successful is while they offer fully in-person recruitment opportunities, they also keep the virtual recruitment and financial aid sessions as options for incoming students. 

“We’ve come back to an in-person strategy [and] we’ve also kept the best of the online strategies,” Ledoux said. “We’re seeing students and families still use those strategies.”

Among all of these strategies, Gardner said all of the planning and strategies for enrollment are what they “strive to do to elevate higher education in Ohio.”