This is an excerpt of Tod's recent presentation to Council.

Enrollment Projections - Preliminary Summary, Public Institutions

In the fall of 2016, public institutions met 97% of their total projected enrollment from the 2015 projections. As we consider the 2017 projections, staff comparing the projections to not only the most recent actual enrollments and the 2015 projections, but also to the 2013 projections. Common to all three sets of projections are the years 2016-17 through 2019-20.  Upon review, we find that the projections in produced in 2017 are significantly lower than those 2015 and lower still than the 2013 projections. The bulk of the difference is explained by lower projections from the Virginia Community College System, consistent with the declines in actual enrollment they have seen as the economy has recovered from the recession. If it were not for the degree estimates discussed below, staff would have concerns about the Commonwealth’s ability to achieve status as the “best educated state in the station.”

Degree Estimates

Despite significant declines in community college enrollment, degree and certificate production at the public institutions continues to hold steady and even increase modestly.  As mentioned above, the overall performance of the public institutions all levels of degrees and certificates compared to their estimates was 105% of actuals over estimates.  If we look at the two prior sets of estimates, we can easily note how low the 2015 estimates dropped compared to the 2013 estimates. We also note that 2017 estimates map closely to the 2013 estimates. It seems clear that the decrease in 2015 estimates was a reflection of a great deal of uncertainty in student behavior and concerns about students staying in college. Clearly though, students did stay in college and complete.

As a reminder, the enrollment projections and degree estimates play significant roles in the Institutional Performance Standards. Public institutions must achieve 95% of their enrollment or degree estimates in order to be deemed as passing the specific measures. Because of this, institutions are properly advised to conservative in their projections and estimates, which they generally are. Thus, if these new estimates are typically conservative we expect to see even greater degree production than the 2013 estimates, with significantly fewer student enrollments projected. This suggests institutional confidence in ongoing efforts to increase student retention and completion. What we seein our analysis is that the 2017 estimates of associates’ and bachelors’ degrees exceed the minimum estimates for achieving the Commonwealth’s goal by 2030. We see a similar pattern to the projections and a track suggesting we will achieve and exceed the TJ21 goal of 100,000 cumulative additional associate and bachelor degrees awarded to in-state students at public institutions.

Projections of High School Graduates as First-Time in College Enrollments

The public two-year colleges have taken a decidedly conservative approach to projecting the enrollments of first-time in college students from Virginia as can be seen in Table 3. However, given their recent enrollment downturn, this is not particularly surprising. The projections of the four-year colleges include students that are not recent high school graduates, a number which typically ranges between 1,000 and 1,500 students in actual enrollment counts. What is surprising is that there seems to be little evidence in the numbers of an effort to recruit from the recent increase in graduates with advanced diplomas (as staff reported at the PCAB meeting).

Table 4 provides further detail on the relationship between the numbers of recent high school graduates. The annual variance of a percentage point in the participation rate of the combined totals of advanced and standard diploma graduates is fairly typical. The difference two percentage points represents a loss of nearly 1,800 new college students, if participation prior year’s participation rate had held true in fall, 2016. AS data sources become available later this year, staff will be analyzing those data to determine what this drop in participation represents.

Conclusions

The enrollment projections and degree estimates from the public institutions represent what has become the traditional conservative approach used by the public four-year institutions. They also represent a return to the more positive, aggressive approach to the degree estimates that were present in the 2013 projections that track well recent actual numbers of awards. The projections and estimates from the two-year sector are much more conservative in terms of enrollment, representing both uncertainty and the declining enrollment of recent years. The community colleges are particularly challenged in projecting enrollment as they simply accept all students who show up for enrollment, which is often highly correlated with local and regional employment opportunities more so than any other factor. Degree estimates from the two-year institutions represent increases and ongoing efforts towards student engagement and completion. In consideration of the above factors, staff analysis is that we remain on track to achieve the goals of both TJ21 and the Virginia Plan.