Enrollment winners, losers, turnarounds and new players

Post-September 11 aftershocks are tilting even the most venerable institutions in the New England higher education marketplace. Spiraling costs, rampant tuition discounting, merciless competition and complex, shifting demographic and career trends have combined to make New England an unforgiving, market-driven environment for higher education. That market has created enrollment winners, losers, turnarounds and new players over the past several years.

The following classification is based on traditional measurements such as academic selectivity, enrollment, conversion yield, retention, persistence, graduation and default rates, student academic success, transfer rates, deferred maintenance, capital improvements, endowment and funding, institutional reputation and ranking, and graduate and professional school acceptance rates, as well as continuous environmental scanning, focus groups and field interviews.

Winners

The winners grasp the gestalt of Spencer Johnson's Who Moved My Cheese? Savvy campus leaders accept the fact that much of higher education's cheese is not only moving, but may soon be leaving New England. In turn, most on the list no longer predicate their enrollment marketing strategies on the 17-year-old full-time, liberal arts student. Some of these schools are among the most entrepreneurial institutions in the Northeast.

Cambridge College has doubled its enrollment, tripled its endowment, extended its campus infrastructure and developed a growing number of innovative, responsive, "high-tech, high-touch" undergraduate and graduate programs.

Hebrew College has ecumenically reinvented its future by co-locating a new campus in partnership with the Andover-Newton Theological School.

Lesley University, having successfully achieved university status, has continued to add timely, high-demand graduate and certificate programs in Massachusetts and beyond.

Middlesex Community College has emerged from the middle of the community college cohort to become one of New England's largest and most comprehensive public two-year institutions.

Johnson & Wales University has grown into America's Career University by developing its impressive downtown Providence main campus, as well as new branch campuses in Colorado, Florida and a number of overseas locations. Along the way, J&W has also garnered top-shelf, brand-name partners like Marriott and Coors.

Urban College has established itself as a new alternative-the People's College of urban Boston. With its recently achieved regional accreditation, Urban is well-positioned to act as a racially and ethnically diverse feeder school to major four-year colleges and universities across Greater Boston.

Losers

Those institutions on the downside of the equation share several telling characteristics. Many are religiously affiliated, small, private, tuition-dependent schools that have been in fragile condition for years.

Aquinas College in Newton, Mass.: Small, private, tuition-dependent, single sex, religiously affiliated-closed.

Castle College in Windham, N.H.: Small, private, tuition-dependent, single-sex, religiously affiliated-closed.

Notre Dame College in Manchester, N.H: Small, private, tuition-dependent, religiously affiliated-- announced its plan to close several months ago.

Trinity College in Burlington, Vt: Small, private, tuition-dependent, single-sex, religiously affiliated-closed.

Regis College recently announced major layoffs of faculty and staff with more cuts possibly to come in order to stay afloat.

Roxbury Community College has received relentless bad press over audits and fiscal issues, with students and faculty chin-ting in with recurring no confidence votes in the former administration.

Harcourt Higher Education turned belly up, in part because it was unable to profitably market its online degree and certificate programs. Hardworking CEO Bob Antonucci told us that "developing the programs was the easy part, but finding the right branding partners and market streams" were the hidden, finally insurmountable, challenges.

Turnarounds

Many New England colleges and universities are in the difficult process of turning themselves around. These institutions have distinguished themselves by their willingness to take prudent risks in their steps forward.

Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology has stabilized its enrollments, begun an endowment, developed new state-of-the-art technical career programs, and provided a valuable engineering technology option for Boston high school students on their way to places like Wentworth and Northeastern University.

Colby-Sawyer College made a successful transition to coeducation several years ago and has turned this sometimes fraught transformation into an opportunity to strengthen enrollment and endowment and make new investments in campus infrastructure, research facilities, and technology with new residence halls, the Bakers Communication Center and the Cleveland Colby Colgate Archives.

Endicott College has significantly broadened its institutional profile through the design, capitalization and construction of new student life, academic, athletic and residential campus facilities while building enrollments and adding bachelors and master's degree programs.

Maine College of Art, the centerpiece of Portland's Arts District and the only professionally accredited college of art and design in northern New England, has significantly increased enrollment and made prudent investments in campus infrastructure.

New Players

Some may remember Hesser College as a regionally accredited private, two-plus-two college in New Hampshire. Well, Hesser was bought out by Quest, and Quest was bought out by Kaplan.com. That's right, Kaplan-that test-preparation people-now own Hesser and even has its own fully-accredited online law school, the Concord School of Law.

Olin College of Engineering will welcome its first freshman class in the fall of 2002 with a newly constructed, purpose-built campus adjacent to Babson College, 500,000 square feet of academic, living and office space, and specialty accreditation from the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology.

Many still remember New Hampshire College before it changed its name last year to Southern New Hampshire University and extended its campus to locations throughout New Hampshire and overseas, thus prompting new and international branding opportunities.

Even traditional land-grant, aggie schools like the University of Massachusetts have given birth to powerful new distance learning organizations like UMass Online.

While the University of Phoenix existed "out there" somewhere, no one gave much thought to its entry into the already crowded Massachusetts higher education marketplace. Now one only needs to ride through Braintree, Mass., to note the first foothold-as well as brisk business-for what some traditionalists still view as a for-profit predator.

York County Technical College did not exist five years ago. But Maine's newest community-technical college today stands as northern New England's southernmost public institution, poised to capitalize on the growth of southern Maine.

For both institutional and Super Bowl winners and losers, 2003 will be a whole new ballgame-a fresh chance to gain a place on next year's list.

James Martin is a professor of English at Mount Ida College. James E. Samels is president of The Education Alliance, a higher education consulting firm based in Framingham. They are working on a new book on presidential transition for Johns Hopkins University Press.

Copyright New England Board of Higher Education Spring 2002
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