076: A Turbulent Future for Enrollment

Solutions for Higher Education with Southern Utah University President Scott L Wyatt

Show Notes:

President Scott L Wyatt and Steve Meredith are joined by Eric Kelderman, senior reporter for The Chronicle of Higher Education, to discuss enrollment projections in the United States over the next ten years. They discuss the growth SUU has seen and the rippling impact decreasing enrollments will have on surrounding businesses, especially in communities where universities are the main economic driver.

Featured Quotes:

We anticipate that there are going to be winners and losers. The small, non-selective privates are probably the most endangered and we’ve seen several of those close in recent years. As you mentioned, I think the flagships typically tend to feel like they’re buffered from this a little bit and that may be the case and certainly the most selective privates, the Ivies, the Stanfords, places like that, are expected to continue to attract a significant amount of interest and applications to maintain their classes. And then further down the line we’ll see institutions like yours, sort of what we call typically comprehensive regionals. And we’ve seen a number of strategies that institutions around the countries have used to sort of try and ameliorate or stave off some of these challenges.
Eric Kelderman, The Chronicle of Higher Education

In Utah alone since 2000, if you average the tuition cost from all of the universities in Utah, the public ones…and we’re affordable. Utah is like the second most affordable tuition rate in the whole country, but even in Utah, tuition and fees have climbed 216% since the year 2000. And during that time, general inflation has only increased by 48%. People are considering this.
Scott L Wyatt, Southern Utah University

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