Dive Temporary:
- Amid declining enrollment and growing competitors, three public Virginia universities carry some monetary viability threat, based on a state-level evaluation launched this week by the Joint Legislative Audit and Assessment Fee.
- These discovered to have “some” threat to their viability — a medium threat ranking — had been Radford College, College of Mary Washington and Virginia State College.
- One other 4 establishments had been cited at “low” viability threat: Christopher Newport College, Longwood College, Norfolk State College and College of Virginia’s School at Smart. The fee didn’t deem any universities at “excessive” viability threat.
Dive Perception:
A lot of the universities discovered to hold some viability threat have confronted substantial enrollment declines, based on the state company.
Radford, as an example, noticed full-time equal enrollment drop 29% between 2014 and 2023 — essentially the most amongst any of the state’s establishments — whereas College of Mary Washington’s dropped by 20% and Longwood’s by 17%. All three are comparatively small regional universities, every with beneath 8,000 college students as of fall 2022, based on federal knowledge.
“For many establishments, scholar tuition and price income makes up a considerable portion of their whole income,” fee workers stated within the report. “If enrollment declines, tuition and price income declines.”
At Radford, the headcount dropoff has dampened the establishment’s different benefits, together with “strong funds, pricing energy, state funding ranges, and amenities,” based on the fee. Nevertheless, Radford reported indicators of hope: Primarily based on scholar deposits as of August, first-year enrollment is on tempo to extend almost 30%, from 1,100 in 2023 to 1,400 in 2024.
Mary Washington, in the meantime, faces extra challenges akin to worth competitors, which has led to heavy tuition discounting in recent times, the report famous. In flip, the discounting has weighed on tuition income.
Furthermore, Mary Washington’s getting old amenities make scholar recruitment harder, and poor funding choices for the college’s endowment have led the establishment to tackle extra debt to compensate, based on the fee.
The report additionally pointed to pricing energy points at Virginia State, a traditionally Black establishment, which the fee stated has seen inflation-adjusted tuition income per scholar fall about 26% since 2015. It additionally faces threat from “the comparatively poor situation of its amenities and lack of ample scholar housing,” the report famous.
Virginia State College addressed the audit immediately, in an announcement to its campus.
“These findings don’t come as a shock to us,” President Makola Abdullah stated. “Actually, they underscore what we already know, that as an HBCU, VSU has traditionally been underfunded in comparison with our contemporaries.”
Pointing to challenges in pricing energy, Abdullah additionally famous that the college’s tuition ranked among the many lowest within the state, permitting the establishment to “proceed to serve a inhabitants of first-generation school college students, a lot of whom come from working-class backgrounds.”
Fee workers identified that every of the three listed as having “some” viability threat had been working to deal with the state of affairs. Nonetheless, they advisable that threat elements “needs to be monitored within the coming years.”
Collectively, Virginia’s 15 four-year public universities enroll about 211,000 FTE college students and obtain $2 billion in state basic funds, whereas taking in one other $3 billion in tuition and price income.
General, enrollment on the state’s universities has elevated 6% over the previous decade, based on the fee. Virginia Tech has seen essentially the most development, with a 22% soar, whereas George Mason College and James Madison College additionally grew enrollment 20% or extra throughout that point.
