Introduction: Several Policy Briefs over the years have outlined the serious problems the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) has faced in terms of a serious long decline in enrollment and weak graduation rates.
______________________________________________________________________________________________
The 13-year decline in enrollment beginning in 2011 took the peak 2010 count of 119,000 to 98,380 in 2018 and 82,688 in the fall of 2023—a 30.5 percent drop. Recent announcements report a slight dip in fall 2024 numbers. Over the period, full-time students have fallen from 105,923 in 2010 to 71,537 in 2023 (-32.5 percent).
For the fall 2024, enrollment fell 0.2 percent. However, as noted in a Policy Brief from January (Vol. 24, No.2), applications have fallen dramatically for the system and, in an effort to maintain enrollment, the acceptance rate for applicants has surged to over 90 percent. The national average is 67 percent and anything above 50 percent is considered on the high side.
Note that the acceptance rate at the top 10 ranked universities averaged 5.6 percent with five of the schools at 5 percent or lower. The 50th ranked university had an acceptance rate of 29 percent. Inevitably, very high acceptance rates such as at PASSHE schools now will be reflected in graduation rates, academic achievement and school rankings.
Note that in the U.S. News and World Report’s latest ranking of 436 universities nationally, West Chester was placed 220th and Indiana University of Pennsylvania at 329th – the only two PASSHE schools that qualified for the national rankings. Meanwhile, the ranking placed Penn State at 63rd, the University of Pittsburgh at 70th and Carnegie Mellon was ranked 21st. Many other private schools in Pennsylvania ranked high as well.
Another U.S. News and World Report analysis ranks schools with few, if any, doctoral programs on a regional basis. There are 171 schools in the north, Slippery Rock was the best PASSHE school at 44th. All other PASSHE schools were ranked worse than 100th. Meanwhile, Cheyney ranked 181st out of 211 liberal arts colleges in another U.S. News and World Report ranking of national liberal arts colleges.
Graduation rates
One of the key factors in evaluating a college or university is the graduation rate. For purposes of this discussion the four- and five-year rates are examined for PASSHE schools. Six-year rates are typically slightly higher than five-year rates. But there is usually a significant change from four-year to five-year graduation rates.
The PASSHE website conveniently provides graduation rates for cohorts by year of entering the schools. This analysis looks at two cohorts of all students in the system to assess whether rates have increased, decreased or stayed the same over a long period.
The two cohorts examined are from 2008 and 2018 for both four- and five-year graduation rates. In the 2008 cohort, there were 19,635 full-time enrollees combined in the PASSHE schools. Of those, 37 percent graduated in four years and 54.3 percent in five years—an additional 17.3 percent. Not reported here in detail, but generally another 2 to 3 percent will graduate in the sixth year.
By school, Cheyney was by far the lowest with a four-year rate of only 11.4 percent and only 23.4 percent by year five. Slippery Rock led the four-year performance at 49 percent and the five-year rate at 65.7 percent. West Chester rates were just below Slippery Rock’s.
The other schools ranged from 30 to 38 percent for four-year graduation with Millersville highest and PennWest lowest. West Chester, Slippery Rock and Millersville topped the five-year rate at over 60 percent.
The 2018 cohort was chosen for analysis because it was 10 years later and well after the 2010 highwater mark for total system enrollment. It also allows four- and five-year graduation rate comparisons. For 2018, the full-time cohort was 16,677, which was 2,958 under 2008 and 3,653 below the 2010 count.
Interestingly, the four-year graduation rate for the entire cohort rose from the 2008 level to reach 42.4 percent, a full 4.5 percentage points higher. But that improvement did not carry over to the five-year rate, which stood at 54.6 percent. East Stroudsburg turned in the worst performance for five-year rates at only 38.1 percent. Meanwhile, Cheyney notched a substantial improvement by graduating 31.7 percent of the cohort after four years and 39.6 after five years.
West Chester led the way with a four-year graduation rate of 52.7 and 68.4 percent for the five-year rate. Slippery Rock was not far behind in a strong second place showing at 51.4 percent for four-year graduation and 63 percent for the five-year rate. East Stroudsburg saw a major drop in both graduation rates.
Notwithstanding the marginal improvement in the four-year graduation rate for the schools combined, the five-year rate was largely unchanged for the entire system.
It could well be that two offsetting factors are at work. The decline in the number of students could have reduced class size and led to improvement in academic performance—all other things being equal. At the same time, the ongoing increase in acceptance rates has no doubt lowered overall student readiness to learn at the college level, somewhat offsetting the benefits of class-size reduction.
The answer to that conundrum will become clearer as the relation of admission standards in the last five years begins to impact the cohorts of the post-pandemic period. Then, too, the freezing of tuition seems to be stabilizing enrollment. But will the acceptance rates remain very high? Or will the overall applicant quality improve? That remains to be seen.
The freezing of tuition creates another problem. The longer tuition is frozen, the longer PASSHE will be asking for increasing grants from the state as its costs rise with inflation and advancing employee costs. And to the degree that low graduation rates persist at several schools, with state subsidies rising, the lower the return to taxpayers for their investment in education.
Conclusion
PASSHE is facing enormous problems. Among them, low graduation rates, heavier dependence on state tax dollars and the possibility of yet another significant slide in enrollment as the statewide high-school graduation numbers are projected to fall over the coming years.
