Lower the standards, more students will apply.
It’s been a year since the state of Idaho embarked on an ambitious experiment: directly admitting graduating high school seniors into Idaho’s public colleges and universities without requiring them to fill out an application.
For many institutions in the Idaho system, it worked.
Over all, enrollment at Idaho’s public colleges and universities rose 3.1 percent, to 74,632 enrolled students from 72,360. This comes after a volatile few years. Enrollment consistently increased from fall 2006 to fall 2012. In 2013, enrollment numbers dipped sharply, and the number of enrolled students has bounced up and down since then. The most recent bump was much larger than the only other enrollment increase in the past four years — in 2014, enrollment only rose by 1.2 percent.
But with the direct admissions program, part of the state’s larger campaign to get more Idahoans to think about their Next Steps after high school, the number of first-time, resident freshmen who enrolled immediately after college jumped 6.7 percent from fall 2015 to fall 2016.
Boise State University saw the biggest boost, with an 8 percent increase in overall enrollment. The University of Idaho’s enrollment numbers rose 3.6 percent — a reversal for the university, which before had seen falling enrollment since 2012.
“I consider the program a success,” said Chuck Staben, the University of Idaho’s president.
It was Staben’s idea to establish the direct enrollment program, an effort to boost the number of Idaho high school graduates who went straight to college instead of straight to career.
Idaho colleges have struggled to keep up with the rest of the nation in terms of the percentage of high school graduates who go directly to college. In 2010, the state ranked last. Although the rates have fluctuated a bit since then, they have remained low. In 2013, for instance, Idaho’s statewide going-on rate was 53 percent, while nationally, 65.9 percent of high school graduates enrolled in college. But Idaho isn’t the only state that must deal with this dilemma — enrollment levels have lagged in much of the country since the post-recession postsecondary enrollment boom, according to the most recent figures available from the National Center for Education Statistics.
Staben attributes Idaho’s low enrollment rate in part to the state’s strong economy. While in October the national unemployment rate was 4.9 percent, Idaho’s was 3.3 percent. High school graduates could find jobs straight out of school and be paid instead of paying tuition. Many asked, “Why not?” Staben said.
Via Inside Higher Ed