NEWS

Enrollment bubble bursts at Montana universities

Kristen Cates
GreatFalls
A group of University of Montana students study. Enrolled has continued to drop at UM.

With a few exceptions, it’s safe to say the enrollment bubble has burst at Montana’s colleges.

Because of this, four-year colleges and two-year colleges in the Montana University System are looking at programs that were added when enrollment boomed during the recession and deciding what programs and personnel need to be adjusted or cut.

“We knew it was going to hit,” said Tyler Trevor, deputy commissioner for planning and analysis with the Montana University System. “It just masked itself for a few years.”

Across the Montana University System, enrollment is down 1.9 percent from 2014 to 2015, but since 2005 enrollment has grown by almost 10 percent. A lot of universities and community colleges started seeing explosive enrollment growth in 2008 and 2009. Even though enrollment has been in decline across the state since 2012, it’s still higher than before the recession.

UM’s enrollment problems

Nowhere is it more visible than at the University of Montana in Missoula, where President Royce Engstrom announced earlier this month that 201 positions will be cut because of continued declining enrollment over the last few years. That equates to a $10 million budget adjustment that will need to be phased in over time.

“Part of the reason is the choices students are making,” Engstrom said.

Enrollment at the the University of Montana has continued to decline forcing the university to cut 201 positions.

While there were years of growth in enrollment at the University of Montana from 2008 to 2011, enrollment has dropped steadily since and is now not only lower than it was in 2008 when the recession began, but is down almost 800 students from where it was 10 years ago.

“The enrollment did fall more than we could have predicted,” he said.

While UM didn’t predict a 6 percent decrease in enrollment over 10 years, Engstrom does believe there are a number of factors at play.

“I can’t discount the negative publicity around sexual assault,” he said, referring to the Department of Justice investigation into how UM handled cases of reported sexual assault on campus in 2011.

But he said there is more to it than that.

First, Montana has a declining population of high school students, meaning there are fewer potential college students. In addition, when the economy was bad, enrollment surged and now colleges are feeling the reverse effects of people going back to work. College students also started choosing degrees more aligned with science, technology, engineering and math fields. UM is a liberal arts college, focusing more on development of general knowledge rather than a focus on professional, vocational or technical curriculum.

A lot of the cuts — or budget adjustments as Engstrom describes them — come because of additional classes and staff members that were hired when enrollment boomed.

Not only did the main campus see enrollment grow steadily by 200 to 400 students a year for a few years, but enrollment at Missoula College, the two-year college tied to the University of Montana, has increased by 61 percent since 2005. The college used to have 917 students, but Engstrom said as the economy changed more students started enrolling in the healthcare careers the college started offering. Enrollment this fall stood at 1,481 students, down from its peak of 1,781 students in 2012.

“We basically had to staff up,” Engstrom said. “We had to add people that we needed to run a bigger institution.”

Cuts are expected in journalism, anthropology, English, geography, liberal studies, art, political science, forestry management and some programs at Missoula College. Of the 201 positions that need to be cut, Engstrom said 52 will be faculty positions. The other positions cut will be administrative, contract professionals and more.

Engstrom said the university used grants and other temporary funding sources to cover some of the budget gaps, but he said the gap has become too wide now to depend on those fixes.

“Now we need to make the adjustments,” he said.

There will still be a robust offering of classes for students, Engstrom said. It just might be that there are less sections of a class offered. This won’t stop the university from considering programs that need to be added, either.

“Universities have to continue to evolve,” he said. “Programatically, we’re not changing much. The choices to students aren’t changing much. The quality of the faculty is exceptional and always will be.”

Two-year college declines

It’s both good and bad news for Montana’s two-year colleges that the economy is improving. Driven to help with workforce demands, people like Susan Wolff, dean and CEO of Great Falls College Montana State University, are happy to see more people finding employment.

“We want a strong economy because it helps the community we live in,” she said.

Mario Marinez of the Pacific Northwest Regional Council of Carpenters takes a tour of new welding stalls with Great Falls High senior and Great Falls College MSU welding student, Jackie Swartz, during a dedication of the newly renovated trades facility.

The adverse side to that is that enrollment has dropped steadily at most of Montana’s two-year and community colleges since 2012. Community colleges capitalized on unemployment and started enrolling a significant increase in non-traditional college-aged students. They re-trained those who were unemployed to enter growing workforce fields such as health care or welding.

“Now those same people are finding work,” said Trevor, with the university system.

Montana’s two-year and community colleges saw a decreased enrollment of 6.5 percent over the last year. Trevor said the national average is a 3.7 percent decline. But because Montana’s two-year college enrollment numbers are so small it skews the data compared to the national average.

Great Falls College MSU’s enrollment dropped from 1,379 students in 2014 to 1,282 in 2015 — a 7 percent decrease. The college is still up from the 1,080 students enrolled in 2005.

Since she arrived in 2012, Wolff said she has been trying to phase in cost-saving measures, knowing that the bubble on enrollment was likely to burst.

“We looked at all hiring. We looked at our budget, and we looked at travel costs,” she said. “I was just trying to get ahead of it. We weren’t in any major decline — yet.”

Since that time, programs such as the radiology technician and interior design have been suspended. Adjustments were made to the wind energy technician program to now call it an industrial technician program so students are skilled in all sorts of manufacturing needs, Wolff said.

Like at UM, Wolff said less sections of a class might be offered in a semester. Over the last few years some vacant positions weren’t immediately filled or were combined with other jobs to create a $400,000 budget savings.

While doing this, Wolff and Great Falls College MSU staff also have had to be conscious about increasing programs to meet workforce demands in Great Falls. With the establishment of ADF, Wolff worked with the Great Falls Development Authority to find additional funding sources to expand space in the industrial trades building so more welding spaces were available to meet workforce needs.

Wolff said even with the enhanced welding program, she isn’t anticipating Great Falls College MSU’s enrollment will be increasing soon. But she does hope it will stabilize as the college continues to find ways to meet workforce needs in Great Falls. New programs can typically be added within 18 months, a fairly short turnaround in the higher education world.

“What we have to do is be smart and see where we’re going to grow. We have to be ahead of the curve,” she said. “I want us to be proactive. I want us to be out in the community and know what they need.”

MSU, the exception

While most of the four-year colleges are dealing with enrollment decreases over the last few years, MSU Bozeman’s enrollment has steadily been on the rise with 13,108 students enrolled this fall — up from 10,528 in 2005, making for a 24.5 percent enrollment increase in 10 years and up slightly from the 12,971 students enrolled in 2014.

Tracy Ellig, communications director for MSU, said there are a couple of reasons for the increase.

“A huge portion of enrollment growth has been in the College of Engineering,” said Ellig.

MSU research associate Casey Delphia, right, and Paloma Amaral, an exchange student from Brazil, prepare bee specimens for examination and identiification.

In 2002, there were 2,145 students majoring in engineering. In 2015, that number has grown to 3,611 students.

Ellig said a lot of MSU’s success has been purely that it was an institution already offering STEM career fields before the economy crashed and people wanting to find employment in these stable, STEM-based career fields.

“There was a migration toward careers that appear to be safer and at above average wages,” he said. “We see people thinking about, ‘Am I going to have a job, and is it going to pay well?’”

Enrollment also has grown in agricultural and business fields. The world’s population has increased, which has a direct impact on agricultural needs, he said.

“As more people enter the middle class, their eating habits tend to change markedly to greater consumption,” Ellig said. “Additionally, within the U.S. the demand for specialty food products such as organic, local and artisan, has created large, new market niches for graduates.”

But enrollment growth alone isn’t what’s lead to the success at MSU. Ellig said MSU has pumped additional resources into instruction — increasing spending in that area by 40 percent as well as putting more money into student support services.

Ellig said MSU saw the need to not only enroll students, but retain them, putting more resources into tutoring, academic advising, financial aid counseling and more. In 2009, out of every 1,000 first-time college freshmen, 722 of them returned for their second year. By 2015, that increased to 768. Ellig said the goal by 2019 is to improve that retention rate to 82 percent.

“People keep crediting MSU’s strong enrollment to our recruitment of new freshmen,” he said. “That is only part of the story. Retention is playing a major role in our enrollment gains.”

Reach Tribune Staff Writer Kristen Cates at 791-1463. Follow her on Twitter @GFTrib_Kcates.

A 10-year history of enrollment in the Montana University System:

2005: 35,259

2006: 35,429

2007: 35,293

2008: 35,556

2009: 36,388

2010: 38,909

2011: 40,961

2012: 40,847

2013: 40,169

2014: 39,484

2015: 38,732