Dive Transient:
- Amid declining enrollment and rising competitors, three public Virginia universities carry some monetary viability danger, in accordance with a state-level evaluation launched this week by the Joint Legislative Audit and Assessment Fee.
- These discovered to have “some” danger to their viability — a medium danger score — had been Radford College, College of Mary Washington and Virginia State College.
- One other 4 establishments had been cited at “low” viability danger: Christopher Newport College, Longwood College, Norfolk State College and College of Virginia’s Faculty at Clever. The fee didn’t deem any universities at “excessive” viability danger.
Dive Perception:
Many of the universities discovered to hold some viability danger have confronted substantial enrollment declines, in accordance with the state company.
Radford, for example, noticed full-time equal enrollment drop 29% between 2014 and 2023 — essentially the most amongst any of the state’s establishments — whereas College of Mary Washington’s dropped by 20% and Longwood’s by 17%. All three are comparatively small regional universities, every with below 8,000 college students as of fall 2022, in accordance with federal information.
“For many establishments, scholar tuition and charge income makes up a considerable portion of their whole income,” fee employees stated within the report. “If enrollment declines, tuition and charge income declines.”
At Radford, the headcount dropoff has dampened the establishment’s different benefits, together with “stable funds, pricing energy, state funding ranges, and services,” in accordance with the fee. Nevertheless, Radford reported indicators of hope: Primarily based on scholar deposits as of August, first-year enrollment is on tempo to extend practically 30%, from 1,100 in 2023 to 1,400 in 2024.
Mary Washington, in the meantime, faces further challenges reminiscent of value competitors, which has led to heavy tuition discounting lately, the report famous. In flip, the discounting has weighed on tuition income.
Furthermore, Mary Washington’s growing older services make scholar recruitment harder, and poor funding choices for the college’s endowment have led the establishment to tackle extra debt to compensate, in accordance with the fee.
The report additionally pointed to pricing energy points at Virginia State, a traditionally Black establishment, which the fee stated has seen inflation-adjusted tuition income per scholar fall about 26% since 2015. It additionally faces danger from “the comparatively poor situation of its services and lack of sufficient scholar housing,” the report famous.
Virginia State College addressed the audit straight, in an announcement to its campus.
“These findings don’t come as a shock to us,” President Makola Abdullah stated. “The truth is, they underscore what we already know, that as an HBCU, VSU has traditionally been underfunded in comparison with our contemporaries.”
Pointing to challenges in pricing energy, Abdullah additionally famous that the college’s tuition ranked among the many lowest within the state, permitting the establishment to “proceed to serve a inhabitants of first-generation school college students, lots of whom come from working-class backgrounds.”
Fee employees identified that every of the three listed as having “some” viability danger had been working to handle the scenario. Nonetheless, they really helpful that danger elements “ought to be monitored within the coming years.”
Collectively, Virginia’s 15 four-year public universities enroll about 211,000 FTE college students and obtain $2 billion in state common funds, whereas taking in one other $3 billion in tuition and charge income.
General, enrollment on the state’s universities has elevated 6% over the previous decade, in accordance with the fee. Virginia Tech has seen essentially the most progress, with a 22% bounce, whereas George Mason College and James Madison College additionally grew enrollment 20% or extra throughout that point.
