Published by The Chronicle of Higher Education
Regional public colleges are the backbone of American higher education and, somehow, also one of its best-kept secrets. They educate nearly 5 million students every year, including almost half of all bachelor’s-degree-seeking students at four-year institutions and nearly half of all Black and Latinx students. Yet they’re typically eclipsed by their public-flagship siblings in the popular imagination and left out of the prevailing narrative about “college” by much of the media.
Their traditional mission of broad access and teaching rather than prestige and research may be leaving them at a further disadvantage in an increasingly competitive student-recruiting market, according to a new survey by the Art & Science Group, a company that consults colleges on strategy and market research. Art & Science surveyed 778 respondents who intended to attend a four-year institution in the fall of 2022 and found that the only competitive advantage regional publics had over other types of colleges was their relatively low price.
Being an affordable option is good, right? Not necessarily these days, says David Strauss, a principal of Art & Science. Shifting demographics have led to increased competition for students, which has led public flagships and private colleges to more aggressively recruit, and admit, a wider array of students. Between 2010 and 2021, enrollment at public flagships rose 12.3 percent nationwide, according to a Chronicle analysis, while enrollment at regional publics fell by more than 4 percent. Enrollment at regional institutions in some states has fallen by double-digit percentages in recent years.
For the many students for whom proximity and price matter most, regional publics or community colleges may still be the best option, but for students who may have more choice, the price advantage “is overwhelmed by the perceived lag on stature and other things,” Strauss says, and regional publics “are at pretty dramatic competitive disadvantage on a whole bunch of things that matter to kids.” According to the survey results, for example, they trail behind public flagships and private research universities in the perception of how well they train students in professional fields and in overall ranking. (Strauss says that while students don’t really care about rankings, specifically, in his experience, many do care about prestige more generally.) Private colleges were perceived as being stronger on student-professor interaction.
If regional publics want to increase their enrollments, Strauss says, reaching out beyond their immediate areas may not be effective, as they may not have the profile to do so. And, as institutions that are often underfunded compared with their states’ flagships, they may not have the resources for major branding campaigns. They have to do something that many other colleges are trying to do in the current landscape — find something distinctive to offer. They have to “work on evolving the student experience in a way that is appealing enough that they can hold on to more of the students in their own backyard and be appealing in their target markets,” he says. “That’s not a game that’s been played effectively by a lot of these institutions.”
The Power of Price
Regional publics do have strengths to draw on. A third, or 35 percent, of respondents to the Art & Science survey identified a regional public as a realistic first choice, making them and national publics (32 percent) the most-popular institution types among full-time four-year college applicants. In addition, 40 percent of Black respondents and 43 percent of first-generation college attendees indicated a regional public as their first choice.
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The Art & Science survey was intended to help regional publics, not insult them, says Craig Goebel, a principal of the firm, in response to García. Affordability and access are key to the institutions’ missions, but “the market has shifted away from regional publics dramatically,” Goebel says. “It’s really about finding where the substantive strengths of the institution can differentiate them from these other institutions vying for the same students.”
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Is there anything to be learned from the Art & Science survey? Experts say that the institutions need to do a better job emphasizing their strengths.