When Cardinal Stritch University president Dan Scholz sat down on April 12 to record a special message for the campus community, few could have fathomed what was coming. Facing stark fiscal realities – including a downward enrollment trend that saw the institution’s undergraduate headcount plummet from a high of 3,026 students in 2011 to a
When Cardinal Stritch University president Dan Scholz sat down on April 12 to record a special message for the campus community, few could have fathomed what was coming.
Facing stark fiscal realities – including a downward enrollment trend that saw the institution’s undergraduate headcount plummet from a high of 3,026 students in 2011 to a low of 755 in the fall of 2022 – Scholz informed students and staff that the university’s board of trustees had recommended the 86-year-old Catholic institution cease operations at the close of the spring semester.
“We are all devastated by this development,” Scholz said of the decision, which left more than 800 students searching for another school to finish their degree and 476 people of of a job. “I wish there was a different path we could pursue.”
While the news came as a shock to many, those familiar with the economic and demographic challenges facing higher education in America were dismayed but not surprised.
Nearly 100 colleges nationwide have either closed or merged since 2016 or plan to close within the next two or three years, the bulk of them smaller, private four-year schools in the Midwest and Northeast, according to data from Higher Ed Dive, which keeps a running list of recent college closures.
Cardinal Stritch is one of two schools in Wisconsin to close in recent years – Holy Family College in Manitowoc shuttered in 2020 – but several other small private schools in the state have also seen enrollment decline in recent years. Publicly funded state institutions have also struggled.
Recently, the University of Wisconsin-Platteville Richland, a two-year satellite campus that prepared students to transfer to a four-year school, sent its rural community reeling when it announced this spring that it would be shuttering its doors in May in the face of dwindling enrollments and fiscal challenges.
Meanwhile, 11 of the University of Wisconsin System’s 13 four-year campuses are projected to have a combined deficit of $58.5 million as they enter the 2023-‘24 school year – the result of enrollment declines and state budget cuts. At UW-Oshkosh, which faces a budget deficit of $18 million, university leaders have announced plans to lay off 200 non-faculty staff and administrators this fall.
The less-than-rosy outlook comes as schools are struggling with demographic shifts that have resulted in fewer high school graduates. The dip in birth rates has hit colleges in the Midwest and Northeast the hardest, where birth rates are some of the lowest in the country, according to recent data from the Centers for Disease Control.
While colleges are now faced with a far smaller pool of traditional students, those students – and their parents – are facing some of the highest tuition rates in decades, especially at what were once considered affordable public universities. The average cost of in-state annual tuition at a four-year public university has increased by 179% in the past 20 years in the U.S., according to the Education Data Initiative.
To put that in perspective, annual in-state tuition at a UW System school was $3,791 in 2000. In 1970, it was just $508. Under the 4.1% tuition increase approved by the UW Board of Regents for the 2023-‘24 academic year – an increase that followed a 10-year, system-wide tuition freeze – annual, in-state tuition and fees at UW-Milwaukee is $10,020. UW-Madison’s is slightly higher at $11,215.
As grim as those statistics may appear, many colleges in southeastern Wisconsin are bucking recent downward enrollment trends, not by shipping students in from overseas – although out-of-state recruitment is being boosted – but by working to attract and support students of all ages and backgrounds.
[caption id="attachment_576734" align="alignnone" width="1280"] Dual-enrollment students work in a manufacturing lab at Waukesha County Technical College. Credit: WCTC[/caption]
All hands on deck
On a recent weekday morning, leaders of four Milwaukee-area institutions gathered in a conference room at Paul Davis Restoration in Pewaukee to share how they’re collaborating with each other – despite the hurdles facing higher ed – to graduate the kinds of skilled workers businesses and the community need.
Addressing members of the Greater Brookfield Chamber of Commerce, which organized the event, Mark Mone, chancellor of UW-Milwaukee, highlighted the importance of collaboration over competition, especially given the region’s workforce needs.
“The world of work needs so many different (skill sets) right now, and we don’t have one powerhouse institution here that is so large that it can do it all, and even if we did that wouldn’t be the right approach because there are so many great qualities that each of our institutions has,” Mone said.
The speakers at the event, which also included Waukesha County Technical College president Richard Barnhouse, Carroll University president Cindy Gnadinger and Milwaukee School of Engineering president John Walz, are all members of the Higher Education Regional Alliance. Comprised of the 17 universities and technical colleges in southeastern Wisconsin, HERA is a network that allows institutions to work with each other and other community and economic development partners to help meet the needs of students, employers and the community at large.
As leaders shared stories of what is happening at their schools, the importance of partnerships was clear – partnerships with the business community, with local high schools, with nonprofits and with each other.
Those partnerships have been especially helpful as the pool of high school graduates continues to shrink and as more and more prospective college students have parents who did not attend college themselves and may face cultural and financial challenges as a result.
In addition to dual-enrollment programs that allow high school students to take college courses, Waukesha County Technical College has worked with Waukesha County high schools to develop the Excelerate program. Launched last year, the initiative allows high school juniors and seniors to take classes at WCTC for credits toward both their high school diploma and an associate degree or technical diploma, at no cost. Local school districts pay for their students to attend WCTC.
“They can still participate in high school athletics and homecoming and all those things at their high school, but they get their first two years of college for free,” Barnhouse said.
The students can then transfer to a four-year institution, or they can stay right on WCTC’s campus and put those college credits toward a bachelor’s degree from Lakeland University.
Lakeland’s main campus is located in rural Sheboygan County. It recently moved its Milwaukee Center campus from an office building on the city’s west side to WCTC’s main campus in Pewaukee. Now known as the Lakeland University Waukesha County Center, the school began accepting students at its new location this fall, offering more than a dozen degree programs, including accounting, business and communications.
Barnhouse is hopeful that the move will help ensure more WCTC students go on to earn bachelor’s degrees in high-demand fields.
WCTC also works closely with local companies like Eaton and Generac to develop, oversee and update its technical programs. And it’s been working with UW-Milwaukee to create a liberal arts transfer pathway to ensure its new general education offerings will easily transfer to the university. Technical colleges across Wisconsin recently got permission from the state to begin offering liberal arts courses. Previously, only the UW System’s two- and four-year campuses could do that.
The programs and partnerships have contributed to an increase in enrollment for the 100-year-old technical college. WCTC saw enrollment for the 2023-‘24 academic year grow by 11% over last year. More importantly, the college has seen its total headcount increase by nearly 3.5% from 18,024 in 2022-‘23 to 18,650 in 2023-‘24.
Barnhouse says such partnerships – whether it’s the liberal arts pathway work with UW-Milwaukee or its electrical engineering transfer agreement with MSOE – are perhaps more critical to the four-year universities than they are to WCTC.
“It’s important for us, but not vital,” he said. “If I were a four-year institution, I would be thinking, ‘Where are my feeders?’ because there aren’t enough students in high school.”
Understanding the consumer
Much of the academic changes at WCTC have been in response to the quickly changing technological landscape, said Barnhouse – take, for example, its emerging degree programs in artificial intelligence. But the school also has its eye on the consumer, which includes professionals looking to upskill, younger working students and the ever-practical Gen Z high school graduate.
“We have a very, very savvy consumer in Gen Z. This is a generation that is very pragmatic. They’re not risk takers,” Barnhouse said. “The student coming in now wants a career and doesn’t want a lot of debt. They want what’s called a ‘skinny college experience.’”
But it’s not just technical colleges that are moving quickly to change degree programs and academic offerings.
Many of the region’s private institutions, especially smaller schools like Carthage and Alverno colleges, have added new programs or restructured credentialling in recent years to attract students.
Mount Mary University, which saw its graduate and undergraduate headcount shrink by roughly 6% between 2021-‘22 and 2022-‘23, is also making changes. It announced last month that it was restructuring its academic programming to be organized around three core areas: the School of Arts & Sciences, the School of Nursing, and the School of Graduate Health & Professional Programs.
The shift, staff explained, comes as the university pivots toward embedding science, technology, reflection, art, engineering and math (STREAM) curriculum into its course offerings.
While Cardinal Stritch saw its undergraduate enrollment figures drop precipitously over the past decade, other private institutions in the region have managed to keep enrollment levels relatively steady in recent years, in part by remaining nimble and adjusting to meet consumer demand.
Carthage College, which has seen a steady increase in enrollment in recent years, just announced a $100 million fundraising campaign to help broaden its scope beyond the traditional four-year educational model by creating two-year associate degrees.
The funds are also slated to provide additional access to financial aid for tuition, internships and study abroad programs while supporting the expansion of programs in nursing, pre-health, engineering, business and other high-demand fields.
[caption id="attachment_563633" align="alignright" width="300"] John Swallow[/caption]
Carthage College president John Swallow said the school, which never offered two-year degrees in the past, decided to add the option to better serve part-time students.
“We want to be accessible to students who feel the need to work and take one or two courses at a time. If they’re doing that with us, and we only offer a bachelor’s degree, it can seem like it’s going to take a very long time to complete a program. But if we are offering an associate degree, it’s smaller chunks to bite off, which is more motivating,” Swallow said.
Although most students at the 176-year-old Lutheran college attend school full time, Swallow said the institution is trying to stretch in new directions so it can reach more students.
“We’re trying to break out of strictures – those traditional boundaries of higher education – to reach more people and satisfy their needs,” he added.
Enrollment in Carthage’s new School of Business and Economics is up, Swallow said, as is participation in its new engineering program. The school’s musical theater program is also growing, in part because it is a major not offered at many other Midwest institutions. The college also recently added a Master of Music Theatre Vocal Pedagogy program.
“You might say that’s terribly niche. Yeah, well it is. But students come here from around the world to do it,” said Swallow.
To further stem shrinking undergraduate enrollment, the region’s private institutions are also stepping up their recruitment efforts outside the Midwest.
[caption id="attachment_515595" align="alignright" width="300"] Michael Lovell[/caption]
Marquette University recently expanded its “fly-in program,” which covers airfare and hotel accommodations for prospective students and their parents to visit Milwaukee and tour the campus, as it continues to capitalize on tertiary markets in Colorado, Arizona and Washington state. This year it will also begin putting full-time recruiters in those states. If that proves successful, Marquette president Mike Lovell said the university plans to put recruiters in other states with larger percentages of college-age individuals, like North Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee.
“One of the most important aspects of our enrollment strategy is actually just getting students on campus,” Lovell said. “One in three students that come here for a tour enroll here.”
Meanwhile, Carroll University, which has seen undergraduate enrollment dip in recent years, falling to 2,771 in 2022, is beefing up its recruitment efforts in Puerto Rico, where it once had a strong market, said president Cindy Gnadinger.
Fall enrollment at southeastern Wisconsin colleges and universities
2012
2017
2022
Change from 2012 to 2022
Cardinal Stritch University
4,614
2,355
1,332
-71.1%
Moraine Park Technical College
6,074
4,907
3,074
-49.4%
Alverno College
2,522
1,942
1,596
-36.7%
Milwaukee Area Technical College
18,118
13,587
12,211
-32.6%
Waukesha County Technical College
10,286
7,696
7,268
-29.3%
Mount Mary University
1,640
1,366
1,198
-27.0%
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
28,712
24,988
22,676
-21.0%
University of Wisconsin-Parkside
4,731
4,277
3,947
-16.6%
Carthage College
3,029
2,860
2,667
-12.0%
Carroll University
3,571
3,452
3,283
-8.1%
University of Wisconsin-Whitewater
12,028
12,434
11,079
-7.9%
Marquette University
11,749
11,426
11,167
-5.0%
Milwaukee School of Engineering
2,564
2,823
2,729
6.4%
Gateway Technical College
8,720
9,166
9,881
13.3%
Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design
668
660
896
34.1%
Chart represents latest data from the U.S. Department of Education. Technical colleges typically offer rolling enrollment and offer alternate figures to measure their enrollment growth.
Back to school
As the region’s institutions look to expand their market reach, they’re also increasingly focused on working adults, offering smaller badging and credentialing programs. Carroll, for instance, has developed several graduate certificate programs in business and education. And MSOE has been steadily growing its certificate offerings, which includes the undergraduate AI for Emerging Applications Certificate, and graduate certificates in applied machine learning and “advanced business strategy using AI and analytics.”
And, although their futures might be in question, UW-Milwaukee’s two-year campuses in Washington and Waukesha counties have robust continuing education programs that offer a mix of enrichment courses and badges in software programs. The technical colleges have been offering certificates for years.
The HERA website features a “micro-credential catalog,” where prospective students and employers can search for such upskilling opportunities.
Schools are also boosting efforts to help working adults go back to school to finish their bachelor’s degrees.
“It’s very rare for a student to start at one academic institution and finish four years later,” said Mone. That’s especially true at campuses in urban environments, like UW-Milwaukee, where students often experience what Mone calls “off ramps” that lead them to leave school before graduating.
“Life happens. I become unemployed or I get married, or I have a kid, or frankly, I don’t have the money because college has gotten expensive. So, I step out for a year or two. And sometimes that year or two becomes five or 10 years,” said Mone.
UW-Milwaukee is expecting it will see around 400 “second chance” undergraduates return to school this year.
Alverno College’s asynchronous Accelerate program allows working adults to finish their bachelor’s degrees by completing experiential learning modules, or ELMs, instead of more traditional coursework.
Although nearly every college in the region – and country for that matter – offers a bevy of online degree programs, Alverno says its program is unique because students can map out a schedule that works for them.
“Students graduate in as quickly as three years, but we’ve also taken students who have 110 credits and just need 10 more to finish,” said Kate Lundeen, vice president of enrollment and marketing. “They come through the program really working on things that they might be working on in their professional life or in their volunteer service.”
[caption id="attachment_576735" align="alignnone" width="1280"] Students and their parents wheel carts through a parking garage at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee on move-in day in August. Credit: UW-Milwaukee[/caption]
Supporting students
Alverno and other institutions also recognize the need to reach more Black, Hispanic and first-generation college students – demographics that continue to make up a growing percentage of high school students in the state as well as a sizable portion of Wisconsin’s young workforce. The median age of a white person in southeastern Wisconsin is 36, while the median ages for Black and Hispanic individuals are about 28 and 26 years old, respectively, according to data from the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.
Closing college attendance and graduation gaps among Black and Hispanic students has been a mission often discussed in both secondary and higher education communities in the region, and not just for equality purposes. If universities, and the employers they serve, are to remain solvent, they will need young people of all demographics to pursue degrees.
At UW-Milwaukee, where enrollment has dropped about 22% since reaching a recent high-water mark of 27,012 in 2018, the Moon Shot for Equity program has been one effort to close those gaps. A partnership with Carthage College, MATC and UW-Parkside, the effort aims at using data-driven approaches to ensure students of color graduate at the same rate as white students by 2030. Other efforts to close the leaky pipeline from high school to college graduation include M³ (pronounced M-cubed) and All-In Milwaukee.
Boosting aid has also been a big part of the picture, as many of the region’s most diverse populations also tend to be the poorest. At UW-Milwaukee and MATC, new “promise” programs pledge to cover any tuition costs not covered by Pell grants or Stafford loans for households making $62,000 a year or less. Carthage has a similar program called the Carthage Commitment.
At MATC, the Checota Scholarship program, which can be used to cover living expenses such as food, child care and transportation, has been especially helpful in getting lower-income students through diploma and certificate programs quickly and without debt.
Philanthropists Ellen and Joe Checota created the program in 2022 with a $5 million pledge as a two-for-one matching gift, stating they would donate $1 million for every $500,000 the MATC Foundation raises from other benefactors, making the full-funded gift worth $7.5 million.
According to recent figures from MATC, the pledge has so far resulted in the technical college collecting $4.6 million from the Checotas and other donors – money that has thus far helped 372 students stay in school and 158 graduate.
At Marquette University, dollars are increasingly going to efforts to help support Black and Hispanic students. Its Mi Casa es Tu Casa program focuses on supporting the parents of Hispanic students, especially those whose first language is Spanish. And the school recently expanded its Urban Scholars program, which provides free tuition to low-income, first-generation college students who show academic merit. The program has helped the university attract more Black students from the Milwaukee area.
MSOE, which has struggled to attract women, is creating new sports programs and facilities for women sports in hopes of drawing female athletes to the school.
And at Alverno, the Thea Bowman Institute for Excellence and Leadership was recently established to provide full-tuition scholarships to Black undergraduate students “seeking professional roles in pursuit of social change and service.”
For sophomore A’Ajanae Bowie, being part of the Thea Bowman Institute has helped develop a confidence and belief in her abilities that was first sparked as a freshman in high school when she met her counselor, an Alverno alum.
“I just saw how glowing and confident she was in herself,” Bowie recalls. “And I was like, ‘Wow, Alverno did that for you? Can it do it for me?’”
Today, the 19-year-old Barack Obama School of Career and Technical Education class of 2022 valedictorian is looking forward to a career in health care administration, which she can use to help people in her community and beyond.
“I know oftentimes I see where people kind of separate themselves from others and try to just focus on the people within their circle,” Bowie said. “But I don’t want to do that. I want to be able to branch out and make connections.”
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