The midwest and northeast hit the worst as described in this article. Are public university operational reforms, mergers and/or closures solutions to financial and academic problems as a result of these enrollment drops?
This issue will continue to be a huge problem in Michigan with such dismal demographic numbers for high school graduates. The pool keeps shrinking. It will difficult for small public universities to complete with the larger recruiting/enrollment budgets of bigger state universities.
Michigan and other states facing similar demographics will have to begin discussions about how many public universities are appropriate in their state with these declining numbers. Public policy makers will start asking this question more regularly and will most likely ask questions like should we merge some of our smaller public universities with larger universities and create campuses that report to the larger parent university. Or should we merge small public universities with other smaller universities. The public policy question is whether allowing smaller, declining public universities to continue to receive public funds for operation or would we be better off merging them and have a more effective use of public funds. The question that arises then is whether it would lower costs for students? Would mergers result in significant savings in operations or is this "majoring in minors" with little dollar or significant budget savings. What is needed is data, data and more data to effectively evaluate this concept. Data on exact costs at smaller universities and data on impact of operation and programatic savings--at smaller and larger public universities.
In those states confronting these issues, regardless of any constitutional or statutory complications/prohibitions, it might be interesting for the legislature and the governors to appoint citizen commissions to look at this data and the proposals--and to come up with a set of recommendations for that state on how to position higher education in that state in the future. Should there be mergers, should there be prohibitions on program duplications in the state, should there be a change in funding process and levels, etc., etc.. Better to do this now before a crisis is presented and emergency measures are needed.
Who knows we might see creative and innovative ideas for the future of higher education come forward from these appointed citizen commissions.
Now is the time to think about the future of higher education in each state--before a financial or operational crisis occurs.