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CHICO — Recent budget cuts because of declining enrollment at not only Chico State but across the state of California and the United States have left colleges with financial challenges.
Jerry Ross, Chico State associate vice president for enrollment management, said enrollment issues are driving the decline and he and his team are working on how to counter that.
“Chico State is a campus which hasn’t had to worry about enrollment for a long time,” Ross said. “Plenty of people were interested in Chico State and we rolled along for years without a problem.”
Ross said the fall 2017 semester was the highest point for enrollment, with 17,789 students enrolled.
“We are now down about 22%,” he said. “Enrollment is at 13,840.”
Ross said the decline started a few years before, in 2014, prior to the Camp Fire and the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The good news is when comparing fall 2022 to fall 2021, there’s been an increase in four and a half percent in freshmen,” Ross said.
Ross said the transfer enrollment from community colleges remains a challenge and the college is stepping up efforts to increase enrollment.
“We started doing digital advertising and geo fencing around age demographics which adds to prospective students and parents,” Ross said. “Some of the geo fencing centers around high school and community college students. In fall 2022 we were heavy into that. It reaches more potential students and allows them the goal of getting them on our radar. Building a relationship standard admission with a huge crop of prospective students each step gets a little smaller and the use of data allows us to interact with students and drive interaction within the university.”
Ross said the messaging has shifted.
“We changed our messaging by focusing on four big themes: how we present ourselves, access and affordability, strength of academics and hands on learning,” Ross said. “The campus community and experiences and graduation outcomes focus their messages on those four things.”
Ross said his team participates in campus recruitments.
“We go to high schools and community colleges and college fairs, although we are trying to be less dependent on fairs and make direct communication with students and families,” he said. “We have a diverse team that makes it all happen. The Camp Fire and (COVID-19) pandemic had an impact on enrollment. Both of those factors have contributed. But this started pre-Camp Fire and pre-pandemic.”
Provost and Vice President for Student Affairs Debra Larson said the financial issues are complicated.
“We have been experiencing enrollment decline and with that decline, the revenue side of our budget is made up for tuition fees and our state allocation. Both of those are dependent on enrollment. As enrollment declines our revenue side goes down. We are a campus which has been sized to be serving campuses at a higher number, a capacity we might have been seeing before the pandemic. Expenses are greater than revenue coming in. We have experienced that as we set this year’s budget for 2022-23 with a deficit. We are actually covering that deficit with one time dollars and are able to keep people employed,” Larson said.
Chico State Vice President for Business and Finance Ann Sherman said the decline in enrollment this year has led to an $8 million decline in revenue.
“It’s not a hundred million though at least. We are getting additional funding from the state. Expenses have gone up by $20 million. It’s being handled in a short period of time with reserves we didn’t use last year; it’s one time money,” she said.
“We are closely looking to match instructional demand with enrollment,” Larson said. “This came to a head because the College of Humanities and Fine Arts is not like the other colleges. Our dean does a lovely job of communicating and being transparent with faculty and lecturers. Humanities was beginning to reduce the assignments of lecturers. The lecturers have a reduced workload for spring. This bubbles up in the College of Humanities and Fine Arts. It’s unique to that college for the spring schedule.”
This is happening across the countries with other schools in the California State University system.
“California has been showing a decline in high school graduates. Our community colleges have lost 16 percent in California. We’ve seen the hit with our transfer students and with the pandemic. As students were coming back in 2021 it’s been hard but much better in 2022. The last couple of years have been really hard. The pandemic impacted students’ interests in higher education. It’s largely demographic,” Larson said. “This is happening across the country. Students aren’t transferring as much. At Butte College we are starting to see a change in the positive direction. Transfer students are a big part of the enrollment pipeline.”
Sherman said the college is working on moving forward.
“We are really working on a two prong approach now,” said Sherman. “We are working on the enrollment continuum and how we can put those measures in place for retention and communications toward potential students. We are planning for balancing our budget so we don’t have this budget deficit. At the university budget committee we were talking a couple of weeks ago with campus leaders to discuss this.”
“We are geo fencing with digital marketing and putting out feelers in marketing around junior colleges. We are doing things in the airport in Sacramento where there are big banners there advertising the school,” Chico State Media Relations Coordinator Sean Murphy said. “A lot of it is all hands on deck with the efforts of communications and storytelling.”
Sherman and Larson said there were 5,000 people in the city for the Chico State alumni event, which was very successful and lively.
“We want to give it the old college try to change that side of the equation and have a balance between revenue and expenses, ” Larson said. “We are working on the expenses side. With enrollment going down, its really painful guiding principles to minimize negative impacts on employees.”
Tracy Butts, Chico State dean of the College of Humanities and Fine Arts, says she can’t imagine a world devoid of arts and humanities.
Butts said there was a recent protest on campus spearheaded by Students for Quality Education and the California Faculty Association who were bringing awareness to things happening with the decline in enrollment. The goal was to bring attention to the fact that funding in higher education needs to be increased.
“Concern came from my colleague Robin Averdeck from the history department,” Butts said. “That was the source and result of the enrollment situation. The sections of History 130, Philosophy 102 were reduced and her course load was reduced. Our college is situated differently. We are dealing with different enrollment than the rest of campus. We teach a lot of first year classes in history, English, philosophy and general education classes. We teach a lot of first year classes as well as general education classes in arts and humanities.”
Butts said the college is dealing with the issue.
“We’ve had to make adjustments and add sections we weren’t anticipating. For (Humanities and Fine Arts) we are constantly making changes to the schedules,” Butts said. “We are looking for waitlisted things, and are maximizing the resources we have and talking with chairs and the department. We’ve had a couple of instances where we drop below the time base for threshold of benefits. We worked hard during the pandemic to prevent that situation. We are shifting people and moving them into classes to keep things going.”
The Camp Fire changed things for the university.
“Enrollment has been down since 2017 or 2018. The Camp Fire changed things. There was a downturn at that time. There were a lot of things going on. People in Paradise were displaced. This tightened up the housing market. People left Chico and moved to other places. Then the pandemic. We’ve gone from one crisis to the next, “said Butts. “We want people to see the value of the work we do and make contributions to society.”
Enrollment numbers continue to spiral down as the pandemic wears on, according to an article by Karin Fischer in the Chronicle of Higher Education in August 2022. In person classes have increased and offices have reopened. The numbers of undergraduates fell around 10% as COVID-19 reared its ugly head in early 2020. The enrollment numbers dropping made researchers say if students drop out, they may not finish their degrees.
.The California State University Chancellor’s Office also weighed in.
“The global pandemic limited outreach and recruitment efforts. As restrictions have eased, the CSU was once again able to host ‘College Night’ college fairs across the state, providing high school or community college students, returning students or adult learners, as well as parents and family members, the opportunity to meet with all 23 CSUs in one location. Enrollment counselors have been meeting with prospective students to help them determine which CSU campus is the best fit for them. During the college fairs, students learned tips to help then fill out their application via www.Calstate.edu/apply, important dates and deadlines, information about financial aid and more,” said Director of Strategic Communications and Public Affairs for the CSU Chancellor’s Office Toni Molle.
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