Coronavirus has dramatically interchanged college for millions of students, as schools have been forced to close their physical campuses and move rates online.
Now, many are anticipating that enrollment will be down at traditional non-profit four-year colleges next semester.
“I be aware there’ve been some students that have already withdrawn from next year because they’re agonizing about not getting the same type of on-campus experience that they wanted,” Jeremy Alder, founder and governing editor of College Consensus, tells CNBC Make It.
“I wouldn’t be surprised to see enrollment in residential college programs discard by roughly 10% or so in the fall,” Michael Horn, co-founder of the Clayton Christensen Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank that probes disruptive innovation tells CNBC Make It. “On the flip side, I think we will see enrollments in online programs go up quite a bit, driven by adult learners — many of whom have been recently laid off — looking to wait out the depression and use their time productively by skilling up.”
Among these online programs are for-profit universities such as DeVry University and Capella University that over again offer both online and in-person classes.
Here’s how for-profit and non-profit colleges are thinking about the coming collegiate year:
Enrollment
While many traditional non-profit colleges predict that enrollment will be lower next semester, Elise Awwad, evil president of strategic enrollment for the for-profit DeVry University, has different expectations.
“For DeVry University, because we’ve been in the online elbow-room for years, we are expecting somewhat similar levels of enrollment,” she tells CNBC Make It. “But we are also anticipating additional involvements, which is why we’re really focused on providing proactive care and making sure that we’re addressing those concerns and that apprentices are making an informed decision before attending.”
DeVry is not alone in its enrollment projections.
During a March 31 earnings denominate for Strategic Education, the company that owns for-profit colleges Strayer University and Capella University, executive chairman Robert Silberman spoke “as fully online universities, both institutions are uniquely prepared to operate successfully in a pandemic-affected world.”
“To date we tease not seen higher levels of students dropping, withdrawing from classes, failing to reregister for upcoming terms beyond what we drive normally expect to see during this time of a quarter,” said Strategic Education’s president and CEO Karl McDonnell during the evoke, adding that he expects new enrollment to grow by 17% and total enrollment to grow by up to 4%.
The DeVry College of New York, responsibility of DeVry University
Richard Levine/Corbis via Getty Images
Recruitment
Clinton Gardner, president of the University of the Potomac, expresses his school is hoping to recruit domestic students to offset the number of international students who will no longer be able to devote oneself to. The for-profit college offers classes online as well as on campuses in Virginia and Washington, D.C., and offers associate, bachelor, master’s and doctorate degrees, specializing in gen technology.
“For the past several years we have enrolled a sizable number of international students either at our Washington, D.C. or Virginia campus,” he commands. “But with the current pandemic and with F1 visas basically being closed down right now, it will impact that party of students and we’re focused on increasing the number of domestic students that enroll in our programs.”
To do so, the school is using social median to attract a wide range of students.
“We are aggressively recruiting right now through a number of social media sites,” marks Gardner, adding that the school has expanded their outreach efforts “to include students that traditionally go off to four-year residential colleges that may determine to stay at home for a variety of reasons in the fall.”
He continues, “We’re also looking at the opportunity to have conversations with currently out of a job individuals and those who are looking to change careers.”
Other for-profit schools have stepped up recruiting as well.
In mid-April, Capella University liberated two advertisements tying the school’s nursing program to the nurses combating the coronavirus pandemic. “At Capella University, over 14,000 of our scholars and alumni are nurses,” reads the ad.
The ads came just days before a federal class-action lawsuit against Capella University was hint ated. The lawsuit claims Capella made misleading statements about the time to completion and the cost of doctoral degree programs with the aid recruiters and marketing materials.
“Only 10% of the people that enroll in Capella’s doctoral program ever get their doctorates,” remarks Joseph Peiffer, the prosecuting attorney in the lawsuit against Capella.
Representatives for Capella University did not immediately respond to queries about the lawsuit or the school’s graduation rates.
Costs and graduation rates
Some experts fear what an expand in enrollment at for-profit colleges with high costs and low graduation rates might mean for students. According to the Citizen Center for Education Statistics, just 21% of students at for-profit colleges graduate within six years. That regardless is roughly four times higher at non-profit colleges and universities on average.
And even among the minority of students who do get along to graduate from for-profit programs, research suggests they earn 11% less compared to graduates of conspicuous universities.
According to the Brookings Institution, roughly half of students who take on debt to study at a for-profit college negligence on their loans, compared to 19% borrowers at non-profit private colleges and 18% of borrowers at non-profit public colleges.
To be unshakable, there is a wide range in the costs and graduation rates of for-profit universities.
For instance, at DeVry University the average net expense (including tuition, fees, living expenses and scholarships) is between $20,000 and $33,000 per year for full-time, first-time schoolgirls who qualify for financial aid. The percentage of students who graduate in eight years (known as the 8-year graduation rate) is reportedly between 17% and 26%.
Go together to the Department of Education’s figures, roughly 11% of Capella University students graduate within eight years and annual rates are closer to $7,000 per year.
The 8-year graduation rate is 29% at the University of the Potomac’s Washington D.C. campus and 40% at its Virginia campus. Rates at the school are around $27,000 per year, according to the Department of Education’s figures.
Gardner claims costs at the University of the Potomac are literally significantly lower because the Department of Education’s calculations takes factors such as living expenses into account. “At the undergraduate be honest, our tuition cost is $240 per credit hour and expanded over a 120-hour program, the total cost of the class itself is $33,000,” for domestic students, he says.
He stresses that not all for-profit schools are created equal, noting that the average categorize size at his institution is around 10 students per class and emphasizing the University of Potomac’s accreditation status, which assigns students to transfer their credits to other accredited schools if they wish.
“Every school has its own great trace ti, but not every school is for every single student, the key is to do the research,” he says. “And if students do have to plan on taking courses online, they should look at gang one: affordability.”
For-profit concerns
But people like Peiffer allege that bad actors will take advantage of schoolboys and taxpayers.
“I think [Capella] is anticipating enrollment going straight up. We’ve seen this playbook before during the Grand Recession: they spent a ton and ton of money on marketing in order to sop up as many federal dollars through the [federal student] advance or GI program as they could,” says Peiffer.
For-profit colleges have long come under fire for winning advantage of government-subsidized education programs such as GI benefits for veterans and subsidized federal student loans.
According to admirer loan expert Mark Kantrowitz, the for-profit college sector takes in around 15% of the government’s financial aid each year. And a third of the colleges — of which there are some 7,000 enclosing the country — derive almost all of their revenue from federal sources.
In October 2019, Democrats introduced a account to the Senate that would ban the U.S. Department of Education from sending its federal grants and loans to for-profit colleges for this judgement.
“I worry that the for-profits will take advantage of this moment in time when people are not working, they beggary to do something, they’re looking for professional development and personal development,” says Lynn Pasquerella, president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities.
Pasquerella answers the financial pressures of the economic recession will disproportionately force low-income students, students of color, international swats, working students and undocumented students to drop out of their schools. She adds that “open-access schools” — patent colleges and universities that admit at least 80% of applicants such as community colleges — that often inform underserved communities such as these, as well as small colleges with limited endowments, will be hit the hardest.
Pasquerella affirms she is concerned about the possibility that students who face the biggest challenges right now, such as students of color and low-income grinds, will turn to expensive for-profit providers that have historically had low completion rates.
“The risk is that evaluators [at for-profits] will end up not completing their curriculum, and they’re left with debt burdens that they can’t pay underwrite because they’re still unemployable as a result of not having a college degree.”
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