Overall enrollment decline in Pa.’s state universities rivals last year’s drop, but the number of freshmen is up

Enrollment in Pennsylvania’s state universities has dropped again, but officials are focusing on what they say is a bright spot: The number of freshmen is up for the first time since 2009.

Final numbers won’t be available until a little later this month, but Daniel Greenstein, chancellor of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, said it appears first-year enrollment has increased somewhere between 5% and 7%. Current projections show freshmen at about 15,600, up about 1,000 students, he said.

However, it looks like overall enrollment will slide again by about 4.5% to 5.5%, Greenstein said, putting the system at around 84,000 total students. Part of the reason for the decrease is that graduate enrollments have dropped, he said, and smaller, upper-level classes impacted by the pandemic are still moving through the system.

» READ MORE: Pennsylvania's universities record biggest one-year enrollment decline in more than a decade

“I want to be really guardedly optimistic, giddy with enthusiasm but super pragmatic about what’s left,” he said. “There’s a lot more to do.”

If first-year enrollment continues at a strong pace, the system’s longstanding decline could finally flatten out by 2026, he said. And if the system continued to grow its first-year enrollment at the same rate every year, the system could begin to show overall enrollment growth by 2024, he said.

“It takes a while to refill that pipeline before the overall enrollment is going to go up,” Greenstein said.

The drop comes as many colleges nationally struggle with an undergraduate enrollment decline of 1.4 million, or 9.4%, since the pandemic, according to a May report by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. And colleges nationally are bracing for another expected decline in available high school graduates in the middle of the decade.

Some other area universities also are reporting declines this year: First-year and transfer enrollment at Rutgers-Camden last month was projected to be down 27%. Temple University also had reported earlier this year that it expected to be down about 1,500 undergraduates this fall.

» READ MORE: First-year and transfer enrollment at Rutgers-Camden is down 27%, and faculty are concerned

For PASSHE, the drop is part of a continuing decline that was happening well before the pandemic. Since 2010, when the system had nearly 120,000 students, enrollment has plunged by more than one-quarter. Last year, PASSHE’s enrollment fell to 88,651, down 5.4%, or more than 5,000 students. It was the largest one-year enrollment decline for the system in more than a decade.

Greenstein said the increase in first-year enrollment could be in part because the system has held tuition flat for the last four years while pumping more money into financial aid, helping students afford their education more easily.

Asked if universities accepted a higher percentage of students to increase first-year enrollment, Greenstein said, “My guess is no,” noting that some have done that in the past with poor results.

This year’s numbers are the first to come with the merger of two sets of universities complete: California, Clarion, and Edinboro, now known as Pennsylvania Western University or PennWest; and Bloomsburg, Mansfield, and Lock Haven, now known as Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania.

Greenstein said it looks like PennWest, hit hard by a decline in graduate students, is down about 11% in overall enrollment, while Commonwealth has fallen about 3%.

The mergers drew heavy criticism and protest from some students, faculty, and alumni at public hearings last year, and some faculty predicted the uncertainty around the schools’ integration would hurt enrollment.

Other universities in the PASSHE system include Cheyney, East Stroudsburg, Kutztown, Indiana, Slippery Rock, Shippensburg, Millersville and West Chester.

Also on Monday, West Chester University — the largest school in the system, with 17,275 students — reported a less than 2% decline in overall enrollment. The university cited an 8% decline in graduate students for its drop.

“Related to the economy, we are noticing that people going to graduate school are making economic decisions; they are choosing to work as much as they can now,” said West Chester spokesperson Nancy Santos Gainer.

It’s the second consecutive year that West Chester, which before the pandemic was growing just about every year, has had a dip.

But the school also noted a boost in first-year numbers. West Chester this year has 3,006 freshmen, the most in its history and up from 2,628 last fall. That includes a 25% increase in out-of-state students, who pay more to attend, and almost as much of a percentage increase in students of color, the school said.

West Chester was able to achieve the increase while accepting a smaller percentage of applicants and maintaining their academic profile. The university this year accepted 85% of students, down from 89% in 2021. This year’s class on average has a 3.5 GPA, an 1145 SAT, and a 25 ACT, Gainer said.

East Stroudsburg and Cheyney Universities have seen increases in overall enrollment, , Greenstein said.

An East Stroudsburg University spokesperson said the university had a 46% increase in first-time freshmen and transfer students, attributing it to marketing efforts, a streamlined application process, and new scholarship opportunities, but also the fact that the two previous classes were smaller due to the pandemic.

While overall enrollment declined slightly at Kutztown University, freshmen and graduate students rose. The university said it has 355 master’s and doctoral degree students, up from 207 last fall.