The University of St. Thomas’ net tuition revenue is down $10 million from the 2018-19 academic year, forcing the administration to think of new ways to increase enrollment.
The decline in enrollment can be credited to multiple factors, with the COVID-19 pandemic topping the list, Executive Vice President and Provost Eddy Rojas said. He plans to increase total enrollment by 20% and has outlined 12 steps to accomplish that.
“I always tell folks that hope is not a strategy. We are not hoping for higher enrollments, we are working hard at creating higher enrollments,” Rojas said.
St. Thomas is not the only university dealing with this issue as the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center found that U.S. enrollment in higher education is down 5.1% – nearly 1 million students – since the fall of 2019.
“All colleges and universities are facing the same headwinds, and we’ll all be facing some choppy waters over the next few years, but we will thrive during this time,” St. Thomas President Julie Sullivan said during a faculty town hall on Feb. 21.
With COVID-19 discouraging students from pursuing higher education, recruitment has become more aggressive, with Rojas calling it a “hypercompetitive environment.”
“Some institutions, when they are in financial distress, what they do is they significantly reduce the tuition that they charge the students just to get students in the door,” Rojas said. “We are not one of those institutions.”
Rojas admitted that COVID-19 and recruitment competition have made it a challenge for St. Thomas to gain the enrollment numbers they hope for, but said the university will implement changes so it can continue to move forward.
“Many students that could have had the Tommie experience are not going to benefit from that experience, and we’re not going to have the impact on society that we could have,” Rojas said.
When the decline in enrollment was highlighted in the fall of 2021 by university faculty, St. Thomas held a summit with enrollment management, marketing insights and communications, and innovation and technology services to brainstorm ideas on how to increase the university’s student numbers.
Rojas outlined 12 solutions that came from the summit, including improving St. Thomas’ website, social media presence and its application portal.
Rojas also said the university wants to make the application experience more personable for prospective students.
“We want to leverage technology to support customized marketing to prospective undergraduate students so that we don’t send the same message to all the students, but we make an effort to get to know you as a prospective student,” Rojas said.
While the outlined steps aim to increase enrollment, Rojas feels that St. Thomas will grow because of what has already been done.
“DI athletics will provide us with great name recognition,” Rojas said. “In places that they may not have heard of University of St. Thomas, now they know about us because they have seen our teams.”
As St. Thomas continues to navigate enrollment, Sullivan said she is pleased with the work the faculty is doing.
“These past two years have not been easy,” Sullivan said, “yet we can continue to make great strides as a university, and I really cannot thank you enough for all you have done.”
Scout Mason can be reached at maso7275@stthomas.edu.