News Highlights

Slim Pickings for Local Colleges

2006-04-09

By Robb Murray, Free Press Staff Writer [published by The Free Press, Mankato, MN]

A population surge of high school graduates is coming. The Northeast will be up. The South will be way up. The West will have more 19-year-olds than you can shake a diploma at.

Then there's us, the Midwest. Instead of a big boost in college-ready bodies, we're going the other way. Instead of the nearly 12 percent increase they're seeing on the West Coast, the 12 states that make up the Midwest will see a nearly 4 percent decline in graduates.

In Minnesota alone, the situation is worse - a 10.3 percent decrease during the next 10 years. And in Mankato, the number of students enrolled in grades 7-12 this year is 3,374. By the 2009-2010 academic year that number is expected to drop to 3,137, a decrease of 7 percent.

So, other than a lack of inexperienced drivers on regional roads, what does this mean?

A lot.

On one level, it means fewer people available to Minnesota colleges to draw from. On another level, it means fewer educated workers for Minnesota businesses.

"We're looking at it from the standpoint of the state's stability and the ability of the state to compete economically," said David Laird, president and chief executive officer of the Minnesota Private College Council.

Late last year, the College Council crunched some numbers using U.S. census data. Laird said they knew the number of graduates was shrinking regionally, but the results were surprising, he said, even to him.

Local private college officials agree. But while Laird's view is more big picture, officials at Bethany Lutheran College and Gustavus Adolphus are more concerned about what's going on locally.

"There's no question this will affect us," said Bethany President Daniel Bruss. "Students like to stay close to home. That's always been the case."

Gustavus Dean of Admission Director Mark Anderson agreed, and said that because the vast majority of Minnesota college-bound high school graduates attend college in Minnesota, things could get interesting.

"We'll all be recruiting students, so there'll be competition for them," he said. "Schools want to keep their part of the market share and look at ways to increase their market share."

Market niche, rather than share, may be what keeps the local private institutions from competing too heavily.

Minnesota State University spokesman Michael Cooper said the shift will force MSU, which already gets a large chunk of its student body from the Twin Cities, to focus more heavily on that area.

"For us," he said, "the future is in the Twin Cities."

It also may be overseas. A few weeks ago U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman told an MSU audience he planned to introduce legislation to make it easier for foreign students to study in the United States. Their numbers have dwindled because of post-9/11 security concerns.

Cooper said that as the demographic shift approaches, MSU would like to do whatever it can to maintain the enrollment growth it made during the past few years. MSU is hovering at about 14,000 students.

Different missions

Bethany and Gustavus have never really gone head to head for students. Bethany's mission always has been more closely tied to providing a Christian setting in which students can pursue a college degree. Religion and faith are a major part of the Bethany experience.

Gustavus provides a Christian environment as well, and services in Christ Chapel are well attended. But religion and faith are not as central to the overall experience.

That difference results in the colleges being attractive to different kinds of students. Poll 10 Bethany students. Nine of them will tell you the Christian aspect of the college is why they are there. Poll 10 Gustavus students. Nine of them will tell you that when they came for their campus visit, it seemed like home and it just seemed like the right fit.

There is a big difference, however, in image. Bethany, while it's been around for 100 years, has only in thelast 10 years emerged as a baccalaureate option. Word is getting out, though.

Bethany plans to go on the offensive as the number of high school graduates shrinks.

Bruss says the college will add a few more four-year majors to its ever-growing list. It also plans to continue to market itself.

For years, he said, when people heard the name Bethany, they thought Bible school.

"I don't here the Bible school thing as much anymore," Bruss said. "I hear people talking about this place being the best-kept secret. I don't want it to be the best-kept secret."

While Anderson agrees there are immediate issues to deal with, he also says the demographic situation is something they are looking at in terms of the big picture.

Another finding in the census data is that the population of ethnic minorities is going up, especially Hispanics.

One answer

Gustavus recently hired Veronica Alba, a recruiter who will focus her time on portions of rural southern Minnesota with large Hispanic populations. And while the goal may not be to directly recruit students for Gustavus, they hope the result will be more people in underserved demographic groups being better prepared for college - any college.

"We're coming up with a plan that would allow us to target those populations," Anderson said. "We need to connect with those schools and find out what their needs are and find out how we can help them."

Added Laird, "In our state, we have a residual pool of potential successes that could radically change our future if we think of it that way. There are programs all over the state that show evidence that with a little bit of attention, we can make a lot more success than we have presently."

Which is really what the Private College Council wants to do. Laird said their big concern is not that there won't be enough graduates to go around, but that Minnesota won't have enough talent to go around.

"You can watch the presentations we're making on this around the state," he said. "There's not a commercial in there for us."

Said Bruss, "If we're going to remain competitive, we've got to have more college graduates."

Action

The College Council is taking a multi-pronged approach to spread awareness on the issue.

They've sent people all over the state to make presentations to civic groups and business leaders. Second, they put forth some recommendations at the Legislature to get some financial assistance to help communities encourage success among minority populations.

Laird said a pretty good network ofprograms already exists to help low-income communities and families, and families with potential first-generation college students. But Laird said that existing programs - including the popular federally funded TRIO program that includes Upward Bound - only hit about 10 percent of the people who would be eligible.

So the council is sending people around to talk about this issue.

"Yes, people are very surprised. Some people are just plain stunned," Laird said. "Part of that may be due to the fact that there's an underlying, unconscious assumption that good times are going to continue."

Email this article | Permanent link | Topstories news | Topstories news archives