As students defer for this fall, it's time for higher education to build the bridge to a renewed ... [+] future.
According to an email sent by Harvard and as reported in The Chronicle of Higher Education this morning, 340 first-year students have chosen to defer. Using estimates from Harvard’s reported class of 2023 – which counted 1,650 matriculates – this means that roughly 20% of first-year students have deferred from the top-ranked university in the country. Harvard had also anticipated 40% of their undergraduate population choosing to live on campus; they now expect only 25% based on the number of students who have accepted the invitation to do so. If these are the numbers for Harvard, it’s going to be a wild roller-coaster ride for higher education this year.
A number of student surveys from this spring and summer have pointed to potentially catastrophic drops in college enrollments this fall – some predicting by as much as 20%. Those projections from as early as April look as though they could be quite accurate if the Harvard example plays out for others. Most prognosticators suggested the top-ranked universities wouldn’t be as negatively impacted as the rest of higher education. With Harvard’s latest report, that doesn’t appear to be the case anymore.
Putting aside the obvious financial impact to universities from lower enrollments and auxiliary services revenue, there’s a fascinating new question this starts to raise: what are deferring students going to be doing instead? Is this going to be a year where students are ditching college entirely or will it be defined more by students switching to other higher education options – eg. fully online universities, less expensive universities or universities closer to home? Will predictions about a large number of students taking a gap year actually emerge? These questions point to a new and lasting era of students and parents evaluating many more options and alternatives. And, surprisingly, these are still questions that few can answer into the first week of August – a time in years past when student enrollment decisions have always been a lock.
One college president I spoke with recently provided a telling example of what’s happening out there by saying “we won’t count our students until we see the whites of their eyes,” despite their projected enrollments and deposits currently on track to hit goal. This will be the new norm for colleges and universities this year. All bets are likely off until the first add/drop deadline. So what should colleges and universities do about it? The brutal truth is it’s too late to change what may come this fall.
What higher education institutions need to do is sort out their next 1-5 years. This year will be an economic hit like no other. What’s needed now is to ensure this isn’t the case for the years to come. Diversifying revenue by opening their doors to new kinds of students and offering new models and modalities is how universities solidify their future. Now is the time to do new strategic planning, not contingency planning. Looking toward an era of rapid innovation, for which there are plenty of exciting ideas to pursue, is how leaders of colleges and universities will navigate out of this. Worry less about fixing this fall and worry more about looking to a renewed future. It appears this will be true for everyone, including Harvard.