With the student count at U.S. colleges falling by nearly 1 million since fall 2019, many colleges are on an urgent quest to keep current students and recover their lost freshmen.
At public East Stroudsburg University, in the Pocono range of eastern Pennsylvania, enrollment fell 17 percent after the pandemic started, to 5,100 students as of last fall. Kenneth Long, the university’s interim president, said he often hears of potential students jumping into the retail or service industries in search of $15 an hour, sometimes $20 or more. “That’s what we’re competing against in many ways,” he said.
Here in Indiana, the university is not merging with any others. IUP is a midsize research institution that offers PhDs in fields including English and safety sciences, master’s degrees for a range of professions and bachelor’s degrees in more than 100 programs.Founded in 1875, the university dominates a small town known as the birthplace of Hollywood star Jimmy Stewart and the center of a Christmas-tree-growing region.
On the university’s enrollment team, there is practically no end to the admissions cycle. It offers transfer and freshman seats on a rolling basis throughout the year and sticks with recruiting every day until students actually show up. In an open house for prospective students, recruiter Lance Marshall pitched IUP’s academic programs, student-faculty relationships, Division II sports teams , suite-style housing and friendly vibe: “a really nice college town, very walkable, lots of great shops and restaurants,” he said. “I liked it here as a student. I’ve also raised my family here.”
Last year, Hudson Jean was a freshman who might have gotten lost but didn’t. After high school, he thought about private Lebanon Valley College, near his hometown of Lititz, Pa. But Jean, who possesses a strong bass voice, heard from a conductor about a music professor at IUP named Craig Denison. That contact called Denison “an amazing conductor” and said, according to Jean: “You should go work with him. He needs basses.”at schools across the country. “It was a weird time,” he recalled.
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