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Asking the Magic Enrollment 8 Ball
217 Plays5 months ago
Do we believe the latest enrollment news? In this episode of Online Education Across the Atlantic, Phil, Morgan, and Neil explore the latest challenges in international student enrollments in the US and UK and ask whether we should believe the latest numbers and trends? They discuss the impact of online education, dual enrollment, and vocational programs on student numbers, as well as concerns from dropping applications. With demographic changes, foreign policy measures, and FAFSA completion gaps affecting enrollments, find out what this all means for the future of education and edtech. Tune in for a concise breakdown of these critical issues!
00:00 Higher education policy focuses on job outcomes.
03:29 Debate on education and political motivations.
07:49 Education benefits, OPM, guild, N. Stride's growth.
11:15 Financial pressure on OPM companies prompts changes.
14:56 Limited academic year data, but enrollment insights.
16:03 Slight decline in undergraduate and international applications.
21:18 Covid causing widespread impact on K-12 education.
24:28 Dual enrollment has mixed impact on colleges.
26:05 Challenges facing international student applications and institutions.
31:41 Improvement in FAFSA completion, impact on students.
35:09 FAFSA completion signals impact on state aid.
36:35 Debate over higher education funding and impact.
40:19 Decline expected in international student enrollments.
43:52 Anticipating an eventful year, impact on education.
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Transcript
Enrollment Predictions: US vs UK
00:00:08
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to Online Education Across the Atlantic here in another set of cities with my colleagues, Neil and Morgan. It's great to see you all. And today, the topic that we're going to highlight is there's been so much talk about enrollment and what's going to be happening in the fall with the various developments.
00:00:31
Speaker
And we're gonna sort of address the question about do we believe what's being reported or you know what do we think is likely to happen to enrollments in particular in the US and the UK for the fall. So you'll be able to get us on record making some guesses so we can find out in the fall how close we came to it.
00:00:51
Speaker
But before we do that, I'd like to start out by understanding some of the developments that are happening in the
UK Education Policies: Conservative Focus
00:01:00
Speaker
news. So, Neil, welcome as always. News-wise, anything exciting happened over there in education circles?
00:01:07
Speaker
Well in higher education because we have an election campaign going on and you correctly pointed out that it's quite a truncated election period there's been various policy announcements so the latest one I think was either today or yesterday was kind of an extension of the conservative party's favorite attack line which is they're going to crack down on rip-off
00:01:32
Speaker
degrees or Mickey Mouse degrees, if you like. I'm not sure how that translates. Someone I did see someone post was like, why are they talking about Mickey Mouse degrees? This is like one of the best IPs ever. You know, like why are we why are we calling Mickey Mouse degrees anyway? One of the policy announcements which are coming out due to the nature of the kind of election campaign is that we're going to cut down on degrees that are ripoff. That is to say degrees where, you know, there's a high proportion of students not continuing
00:02:02
Speaker
not finishing or not getting a decent salary job at the end or within a few years and the conservative government is really hot on apprenticeships so we've had degree apprenticeships over here since I think it's about 2015-2016 and the number of students taking those apprenticeships or doing studying for a degree while they're working
00:02:25
Speaker
at an employer has kind of increased so it's kind of just a continuation of the conservative party's kind of policy in which they kind of clobber higher education over the head saying what was the proportion of your degrees that aren't delivering for people and they say look actually you know apprenticeships are the way to go and so we want to kind of take from degrees and kind of
00:02:47
Speaker
add in more apprenticeships. That's the kind of general headline and that's kind of occupying the news over here really. Well, it sounds like there's sort of a bizarro world aspect here in that you guys have the conservative government who are really trying to lead the charge on this about low value degrees because over here it's very much the liberal government that's leading the charge, although I would argue that
00:03:14
Speaker
the conservatives are wanting accountability, so they're not too far off the mark. But it's interesting, you're getting the conservative side, we're getting more of the liberal side, but both of them are really, from your description, attacking the same concepts at the very
Short-term Outcomes vs Long-term Benefits
00:03:29
Speaker
least.
00:03:29
Speaker
Yeah and you know some of this I think I talked about the review of the graduate visa route in last week and so much of this is politically motivated. It's interesting because our education minister studied an apprenticeship and so she came out and said look
00:03:47
Speaker
I went from studying this apprenticeship at this company and look now I'm a government minister but one of the articles I read was a really really good because it basically pointed out she's not mentioned her undergraduate degree at Liverpool John Morse University and she's not mentioned her postgraduate degree at London Business School
00:04:03
Speaker
so one of the best schools in the world exactly so it's just you know it that just encapsulates some of the well let me just say it nonsense that's kind of coming out around all this kind of stuff because it's you know as other people have said it's very difficult to measure
00:04:21
Speaker
you know to accurately measure all of these things as to whether things are rip off and the real value and you know what salaries people get at the end and you know I think I saw a quote talking about computer science degrees and average earnings for those kinds of things
00:04:38
Speaker
But as much as I take Morgan's point, she's made multiple times around, you know, sometimes some subjects need to just go away and we can't preserve every single subject that universities ever taught, ever. You know, there are a whole range of subjects that should be taught that may need to be subsidised or may not bring significant earnings. There's just more to it than the way it's sometimes presented and thought of.
00:05:02
Speaker
Also, I mean, the timeframe really makes a difference. Like, you know, so there is substantial evidence showing that in the long term, people with liberal arts degrees actually tend to earn more.
Shared Higher Education Challenges
00:05:13
Speaker
And, you know, like there's, there's, there's other things going on there, but like these, a lot of the studies are based on short timeframes, like that first five or 10 years out of school.
00:05:24
Speaker
Yeah, and I think what we share, you know, both sides of the Atlantic is, you know, this kind of sort of slightly politically motivated attack on universities. And look, you know, I'm critical of universities, I've worked in university, I've seen some of the problems firsthand, but I think that's the kind of general atmosphere.
00:05:45
Speaker
Yeah. Well, it sounds like you just described our gainful employment situation over here as well, but I don't know if it's commiserating. Hey, glad that you guys are going through similar pain that we do.
Guild Education Layoffs and Market Signals
00:05:57
Speaker
Hey, as long as we're going through pain, Morgan, tell us a little bit about the unfortunate news around Guild education and what's happening there.
00:06:06
Speaker
Yeah, so there were substantial layoffs at Guild around about 25% of their workforce. And this follows on from a fairly substantial layoff last year or within the last couple of years, I believe. So, you know, I think it's pointing to a lot of difficulty one, I think, specifically in that
00:06:25
Speaker
working with employers to facilitate learning kind of thing, which a lot of people glommed on to almost as a good way of sustaining enrollment and things like that. And also just in some ways, the OPM space, you know, guild is not a traditional OPM, but
00:06:40
Speaker
We, you included in the, in the Mad Max diagram. So therefore by definition, it is part of that. But, you know, and, and, you know, right now there seems to be just a lot of really conflicting signals. So, you know, we discussed last week about, to you pulling out of the bootcamp space in part in the UK. But, you know, in the last couple of weeks, they've signed for additional degrees with what's the, the university in Malibu.
00:07:08
Speaker
Yes. Oh, yes. Zoey 101 school. That's where they filmed Zoey 101. If you have daughters, you would know that. Okay. Yeah. No, I don't have daughters. Normally I'm the one coming out with things from left field here, but today Phil is filling that role. So, you know, there are some interesting mixed signals and, you know, I'm hearing rumors of more layoffs at
00:07:32
Speaker
at some other, some of the, the OPMs plus you're speaking to somebody who's hiring in the online ed space as well. He said, you know, the, the applicant pool is just.
00:07:43
Speaker
jam-packed with people either currently working for OPMs or who used to work for OPMs. So... It is tough. It makes you wonder how much of this is an education benefits story or an OPM story or how much of it is a guild story. And part of the reason I mentioned that is I just went to the Instride Impact Conference. Instride's
Market Valuations and Guild's Layoffs
00:08:05
Speaker
very similar
00:08:06
Speaker
and its goals to guild spun out of ASU along with TPG rise fund, private equity fund. But in any case, they're growing. I mean, you know, they're smaller, and they certainly have raised a lot less money, but they're growing. So at that conference, it was all about how much the people were like, I'm shocked how big this is, how many people are here, they're talking about things doubling, tripling, and
00:08:35
Speaker
So it's only an anecdote, but it's a very different story than Gil. But I will note that Gil just raised crazy amounts of money. And so how much of this is that they set unrealistic expectations on valuation while raising crazy amounts of money?
Workforce Demand vs University Degrees
00:08:52
Speaker
And they're pulling back from that, which is different than the underlying fundamentals of the market aren't there. Yeah, sort of more of a right sizing
00:09:00
Speaker
Yeah, no, I think there could well be some of that. I mean, they will want the edtech unicorns. I think there's certainly something there. And you know, today, there's more interesting news out from the Georgetown Center for the employment in the workforce, such as saying that there's a huge mismatch between the kinds of degrees that universities are offering and the kinds of that people in the workforce want. So there's an interesting sort of mismatch there that that is probably worth exploring. And I
00:09:27
Speaker
maybe in either my interesting reads or another post, I'll dive more into that.
00:09:33
Speaker
They need apprenticeships. That's what they need. Yes. There's obviously some Mickey Mouse degrees over in the US. I mean, there may well be actual Mickey Mouse degrees in the US. Who knows? I'm just waiting for Disney to come sue because they're always very litigious about Mickey Mouse. That's right. If they're listening to you, Neil, we're in trouble.
00:09:58
Speaker
Well, and then one other piece of news to keep the run, we're in tough times. Let's just admit it. I mean, we're going to continue to be in tough times, economic climate for institutions and ed tech in general.
Financial Pressures in the OPM Market
00:10:09
Speaker
But the other news I saw this week was that, well, I actually saw at the end of last week is that KeyPath, the OPM provider that was started by Steve Fiering, who founded Imbedet Compass.
00:10:22
Speaker
the guy who helped create the market in the first place any case i keep half just sold to its own private equity firm that owns a majority of the company they're taking over the whole company.
00:10:36
Speaker
in a deal that's only worth $187 million, and that's Australian dollars. I don't know my current conversion, but basically for a very small amount. So Sterling Partners was the majority owner, even though they were publicly traded. They've essentially acquired the entire firm or the agreements there. They're going to take the private
00:11:01
Speaker
And their big pitch for why shareholders should back this move is essentially saying, hey, you're going to get some money out of this acquisition. Otherwise, you're out of luck. Basically, the company is not liquid. It doesn't have the operating cash to meet all of its obligations. And therefore, it was likely to have no real value in its equity. So it's just interesting that's the pitch.
00:11:28
Speaker
for the takeover and saying, hey, this way you get some money. And it was actually a generous offer compared to publicly traded stock. But I would note that and it goes along with the 2U trebles that we've talked about quite a bit, that the financial pressure on these companies, and you just mentioned Guild, but also on KeyPath and the OPM market in general,
00:11:53
Speaker
It's really, there's a shakeout that's happening right now and it's going to continue going. I mean, if you just take a step back and say, look at how many OPM companies have changed hands or changed models in the past two years, even it's pretty remarkable. Speaking of posts, that should be a summary post fairly soon as well, just a recap of all the changes.
00:12:16
Speaker
Yeah, I wrote something you mentioned on 2U, and I was kind of thinking about the top four, maybe four years ago, and how they've all changed. They've changed hands. I mean, 2U have not changed in terms of name or necessarily changing hands, but there's been such radical change amongst the kind of top players. Yeah,
Enrollment Trends and Institutional Health
00:12:39
Speaker
and it's just continuing, isn't it, really, with this announcement and what's happening with KeyPath.
00:12:44
Speaker
Yep, yep, it is definitely happening. So tough times, a lot of change happening. But with that, I think we'll turn it over now to Morgan and our primary topic about enrollments and what we think we're going to be seeing come the fall. Yeah, so, you know, we recently had a tough situation to deal with, at least in Phil Hill and Associates and that we had some good news and
00:13:09
Speaker
You know, that was just such a weird situation we found ourselves nonplussed. You did a very good job of kind of caveat-ing that news to sort of make it seem less good than it was. So it wouldn't be too hard on yourselves. We have a brand. Yes, it's not so much a glass half full, it's a glass half empty of like
00:13:31
Speaker
toxic, super fun waste, effluent. But the National Student Clearinghouse reported some pretty good numbers in terms of enrollment. And here in the US, there's so much talk of the enrollment cliff about how the number of 18 to 24-year-olds has been going down. And Phil always likes to correct them. That's less a cliff than a gentle slope downwards.
00:13:57
Speaker
But we've been seeing declining enrollment. And even though they're small percentages, often they translate into large numbers because the US has a large higher ed population. But this last spring, we saw overall a 2.5% increase. And it was higher in the graduate space. It was a 3% increase. And then as you dig into particular kinds of numbers,
00:14:23
Speaker
they're even better. So historically black universities saw a 4% increase and it was spread geographically across the country, you know, because typically the enrollment cliff is going to be worse in the Northeast and less bad some other places, but we saw enrollment across the board. So, you know, are these real? What is it going to mean for the fall? But let's have a conversation. But I want to first start by Neil, if you can just update us a little bit on what's happening.
00:14:51
Speaker
in the UK, because you've seen some some good numbers too, though they're less surprising, I believe. Yeah, I mean, I think we discussed this last week in terms of how up to date our data is. So in terms of, you know, the data that we have, we don't have we don't have even 2022-23 academic year data. But in terms of kind of enrollment and application, we have had some things coming through.
00:15:17
Speaker
So we're in a slightly different position in that the number of 18 year olds is projected to increase over here for the next oh gosh I forget the exact kind of point at which we're hitting the cliff or the gentle slope but we've got a few years yet to go before we get to that stage. So
00:15:37
Speaker
We don't have kind of the data across of the kind of actual numbers of people who've actually come into higher education recently, but we do have data on what applications are looking like. So if you look at say undergraduate applications, I think there was some data in February around that from UCAS at university and colleges admission service, which manages all those kinds of applications to universities.
00:16:04
Speaker
The number of applications were down by 0.3%, so not a massive decline, but a slight decline. There was a decline in
US vs UK: Comparative Education Policies
00:16:13
Speaker
the application rate for 18-year-olds, which was probably more worrying, given that the number of 18-year-olds are going to increase, but yet the number of 18-year-olds that were applying went down a little bit as well. So that's the kind of undergraduate picture, a slight decline on the latest data that we have.
00:16:33
Speaker
One area of kind of biggest concern and biggest attention over here has been international students because of the policy measures that I've kind of talked about like a ban on dependence being able to come to the UK. So that's where the most alarming
00:16:48
Speaker
information has been recently. So things like study visa applications. So for the first quarter of 2024, there was an 80% drop on the previous Q1 of 2023 for study visa applications. So that's about, I think that's around 26,000.
00:17:07
Speaker
There was a survey conducted by a universities UK, which is a membership body of a lot of universities over here. And I think that that showed that postgraduate taught graduate student numbers were down by more than 40%. So there's a bunch of indicators that show
00:17:27
Speaker
Declines in different areas some of those are more severe than others like international post graduates for example but that's that's the kind of general picture and those are the signals that we're most rely on the moment in the absence of either slightly lagged. Up to date data or no up to date data like that so so yeah on the whole not a great picture and showing a decline essentially.
00:17:53
Speaker
It could be worse. You could be Australia. The political stuff around international students is even worse, where they're talking of reducing the numbers dramatically to the point where there'll be slightly more than one university admitted in terms of like Melbourne.
00:18:09
Speaker
Yeah, and one of the things I read, I can't remember when this piece of work was done, but I think some research was done on international prospective international students. And they basically said that actually the US was probably the largest beneficiary in terms of international students because you have measures in Canada and Australia and over here that are hindering or making people question whether they want to come and study here.
00:18:36
Speaker
We appreciate your efforts. Yes. Yeah, we have a good government for making your higher education more attractive than ours. It's all relative, though. Yes. Well, we'll get back into the game soon enough, I believe. But you know, what do we think is sort of behind some of these, especially like in the US behind the increases? Because, you know, in some ways, it goes, it's counterintuitive, you know, there's been a constant drumbeat about
00:19:02
Speaker
higher education is a scam. And the last sort of recession kind of period that we went through, it seemed like normally in a recession, higher ed enrollment goes up and we weren't seeing that. So what do we think is going on here? Well, first of all, to get this out of the way, the positive aspect that I'm uncomfortable with, I was surprised how broad-based
00:19:25
Speaker
the increases were in the spring data, that it wasn't just a single answer to that. They were just several areas and they were all going up. When I did look into it a little bit deeper, you know, no surprise, but online education is outpacing traditional education. So a lot of the growth is there,
K-12 System Challenges and Enrollment Impact
00:19:44
Speaker
although the metric
00:19:46
Speaker
Our current data that neil is jealous about current term enrollment is sort of doesn't really capture the full online picture but it's a signal but online is a huge source but the biggest source of gains is dual enrollment.
00:20:01
Speaker
So, one way to do it, it's just like you were saying, the UK might be doing a good job of making the US higher education picture a little bit more palatable. Well, the US K-12 system is doing an even better job than that. It's a disaster, quite honestly. And part of what's happening is so many students want to say, well, let me go take a college course or get a course that gives me college credit. I'm not just going to do
00:20:29
Speaker
high school and then worry about college. And that's still picking up at the rate of 10% per year. So a lot of the enrollments come from that. And then the other thing that was noted is for the community colleges, even outside of dual enrollment,
00:20:45
Speaker
The type of institution that's seen gains is vocational. We're back to the apprenticeship idea. It's people wanting to have job-relevant education. So, underneath it, I think those are three of the biggest factors, online, dual enrollment, and vocation specific, but agreeing that it is a broad-based gain. So, good news in the spring, and we'll get to FAFSA, that impact as well, but that's the way I look at it.
00:21:13
Speaker
Why is K-12 a disaster, Phil? I'm interested. COVID is a big part of it. Things such as the absenteeism that's going on is we just haven't gotten our K-12 students back into the classroom. The way that the COVID shutdowns were handled,
00:21:34
Speaker
and getting a little bit political, but the way that the teacher's union actively argued that there was no impact on students and we're doing this for students when in fact all the data is showing massive learning losses for students, social problems, just massive pain for students, yet it was the teacher's union and the administrators who said it. A lot of people lost faith in K-12.
00:22:00
Speaker
you know, I'm generalizing a little bit too much. But part of what's happening is so many are not going to school, or they're going to homeschool, or they're doing dual enrollment. It's people saying we've got to do something different. Even before that, there were problems in the k 12 system of how law students are being prepared for college or work. But this in particular has been a problem. Yeah, it's been
Impact of Enrollment Trends on Institutional Closures
00:22:22
Speaker
a problem for a while. I'm surprised Neil hadn't heard the joke that I heard before I came to the US about
00:22:27
Speaker
the United States has one of the best high school systems in the world, unfortunately, but a way for college to get it. I have not heard that one. Not so. That's new to me, but I feel like you bring the jokes to the podcast, Morgan, I like it. Yeah. So those are some of the things I think that are behind the enrollment games here, but it is good and it came upon games that we saw in the fall as well. The problem is what's going to happen
00:22:56
Speaker
with BAFSA and that problem kicking in. Because you got forces pushing in opposite directions, don't you? Yeah. And I just wanted to also emphasize the extent to which it is very vocational focused recovery. If you look at the majors, which they break out, so you've got engineering, it's 6% up. Health is 3.5% up roughly, whereas social science, which is my own personal
00:23:23
Speaker
It's down almost 2%. English is down almost 2.5%. So it's very much a vocational kind of recovery there. Engineering for the web. Yes. I've been seeing various reports about the frequency with which institutions are closing down in the US. So is this news good enough to alleviate some of that? Or are enrolments the main cause of that? I guess two questions.
00:23:53
Speaker
I would say this recovery has some limited good news, limited in the sense that one of the areas that is less strong is private institutions. And that's small rural privates that are especially hard hit by the closures. So it's less good news for them and much better news for community colleges, although
00:24:18
Speaker
The problem with dual enrollment is that often people are not paying full freight. So it's less financially rewarding for the institution. But Phil had a thought there. Well, it was similar on the dual enrollment. It's a mixed picture. I mean, clearly increasing enrollments helps. And I have talked to a lot of community colleges where it's a welcome sight. They're really seeing a change on campus. But it's a limited picture.
00:24:43
Speaker
So basically agreeing with Morgan, it's a mixed picture, but yeah, there is some good news and better than there. But answering it slightly differently, I do not think this news from the spring is going to slow down the number of closures. I think the forces driving closures is so much bigger than a one or two semester bump. And so I expect that news to continue. And as a matter of fact, I think it'll accelerate this summer.
00:25:11
Speaker
Yeah, because I mean, although the, the numbers were really good with freshmen, or freshers, as you call them in the, in the UK, you know, which, which should all go well for, for later on, as they continue, you know, their, their, their passage through the system will be quicker if they're, if they're starting in
Vocational Focus and Demographic Shifts
00:25:29
Speaker
high school. So yeah, limited, limited good news. And things are very sort of patchy as, as you sort of break it out, they're not the same.
00:25:37
Speaker
Although I would say I think there's a big commonality with what I've been reading, particularly in your post on the UK, that you have enrollments, but then you also have financial health of institutions. And they're correlated, but that correlation is not one. I mean, there's inflation. There are a lot of other factors impacting institutional health. I know today we're mostly talking enrollment, but there are other factors at play with financial health.
00:26:04
Speaker
Yeah, and I mean, I've often talked about the kind of dependency between, you know, institutions, financial help and health and international students. I mean, one of the things that I think we've seen is a big drop in applications from Nigeria. And I think, you know, that will be in part due to some of the policy measures or muted policy measures over here. But it's also I think to do with a kind of a currency collapse there as well. So, you know, there was a report recently from the Office of Students over here, which
00:26:33
Speaker
was kind of looking at the risks and the state of kind of different institutions kind of finances and you know I think one of their calls was to sort of retest assumptions that institutions have made around UK and international student kind of growth really so yeah I mean it's these things are feels like these things are most strongly linked to the financial health
00:27:00
Speaker
of institutions over here. But there are kind of other factors outside of the policy stuff that's got garnered the attention that can influence that. And part of this report from the IFS was talking about some of those factors, as well as the ones that we kind of know more about, I suppose. I mean, I think sort of, you know, we talked about geography as in with within the US. But interestingly, this weekend, I was reading there was a piece in the New York Times actually in The Guardian about
00:27:29
Speaker
Wait, you just confused the New York Times and The Guardian? Yes, that's very different. Very different newspapers. My apologies to both. For different reasons. Yes. But there's some people who are concerned about population decline and who are committed to having a lot of children. But in the course of reading that, just numbers about childbearing rates. And it was really, really low.
00:27:53
Speaker
I think the number is 2.1 or 2.2. Each couple has to have that number of students in order for the population to remain stable. And it's lowest in Korea, but around developed countries, it is typically very low, including in Europe. And the only places where it's not is in the developing world. So in some ways, we'll see over time a real shift in terms of it's a larger world demographic cliff there as well.
00:28:23
Speaker
And I know we need to get to sort of FAFSA effect as well, but I do have one point here, which is it seems to me that part of what's happening without taking a stance on the policies, whether I support them or not, but the natural effect is it's sort of forcing more focus on organic growth as in
00:28:44
Speaker
how are your home students in your own country, particularly in Canada, Australia, the UK, but also to a smaller degree here in the US people or schools have been using them as like a silver bullet for enrollment and finances. And a lot of that, not all of it, but a lot of it's going away. And I think it's going to cause a little bit more focus on what is the natural growth or decline rate of your native
00:29:13
Speaker
population.
Online Education as a Strategic Pivot
00:29:14
Speaker
I don't know if it's going to continue, but it seems to me, I think we're getting rid of silver bullets to a degree. That could be good or bad. Although I think to an extent some places are using online as a silver bullet in that regard. But yeah, there's only so far that silver bullet will take you.
00:29:33
Speaker
Yeah, and I was interested in that angle around, I know that the figures have kind of perked up a bit recently, but do you see universities in the US targeting different markets? I mean, I'm not sure how well saturated online education is, for instance, across the myriad of US institutions, but certainly that's been one area where
00:29:58
Speaker
some of these challenges and other factors have kind of catalyzed universities to go into online and even consider other areas. I just wondered if that's what's happening in the US. Is what's happening changing their behaviors and changing who they target and what markets they play in?
00:30:16
Speaker
I think so, but there's very much a rich get richer aspect that's happening over here. So on the good side, it's more of an existential issue and more institutions are realizing, hey, we have to rethink who we're serving, and quite often that gets into online education.
00:30:34
Speaker
But there's so many schools where they're starting it as if they're just discovering online or they're just discovering a degree completion and they haven't thought through how do we operate this way effectively and how do we target students. But meanwhile, you have the Southern New Hampshire's are now getting over 200,000 students, Western governors, the ones who have been working at this for decades. They're the ones who are doing the primary growth.
00:31:01
Speaker
but there are a greater number of schools that are trying it. But part of what that means, a lot of schools are going to try and fail to add online. And not just online, but therefore a non-traditional working family population, which is different. And unfortunately, the current regulations are going to mean that that trend continues in terms of the big get bigger, because it's going to make it harder for smaller places to break in.
00:31:30
Speaker
Yeah, you got to keep those Chicago delivery trucks under control there, Morgan. Yeah, sorry about that. Perhaps we can start talking about the future and I can go on mute for a bit. Oh, no, no, it's not that bad. But yeah, let's, but yeah, we should talk about in the US, the big issue is FAFSA. And, you know, right now things are settling, it's improved what they call the FAFSA completion gap, which is the gap
00:31:55
Speaker
Last year to this year on the percentage of number of students who have completed an application for financial aid for incoming students high school becoming freshman it's down currently about fifteen percent but it's improving every week.
00:32:11
Speaker
But the rate of improvement is slowing and it looks like it's gonna settle on around a 10% gap when all is said done from what happened last year plus it's happening multiple months later so there's the impact of are you losing students even if they completed the application but now it's so late they've just changed their mind.
00:32:33
Speaker
There is another, there was a very good article inside higher education that just came out yesterday, I believe, talking about the forgotten students, which is returning students.
00:32:43
Speaker
And they were looking at the situation, what happens for the students who are already in college and they're applying for financial aid to continue their studies and not enough is talked about them. That's also looking like a 10% drop. So there's a huge retention problem as well.
Predicted Enrollment Declines in the US
00:33:01
Speaker
So there's a lot of speculation because we've never gone through this before, but you could almost see that there are signals that we could be down 10% enrollment.
00:33:12
Speaker
next fall from where we are. And maybe let's say there was a two and a half percent natural gain. So that still means you might be down seven and a half percent. So if you just simply take the headline numbers and analysis, it's possible that we could be down, let's just be safe, five to 10 percent total enrollment in the fall. And if you compare that to during COVID, during COVID, we dropped almost three and a half percent overall.
00:33:39
Speaker
but incoming freshmen dropped 10% within one year. So this is why we're saying there's some signal saying we might have worse enrollment declines in the fall than we did for COVID.
00:33:51
Speaker
And we don't have the emergency federal funding to help institutions offset all of those financial losses coming from this or students having money. So looking at the, this is part of the question, I want to see Morgan, if you believe it, but like take those two signals. Do you believe that we might be seeing 10% drops in total number of students for the fall? Let's put you on the record. I think we will see significant drops, you know,
00:34:20
Speaker
probably less than double fairs, but something in there, and that's a huge number. And again, I don't think they'll be evenly spread, so they'll be worse in some particular kinds of institutions, so especially rural.
00:34:34
Speaker
not in large towns, not elite kinds of places and having much to fill discuss spent hours and hours and hours coming through through tax records while I watch cricket. You know, some of these places are sitting close to the edge. So you know, I think it's going to mean
00:34:51
Speaker
quite a lot of closures and some hardships and places that are smart are going to start thinking quickly about how to sort of make themselves more appealing to students and to assuage some of that problem. But I think we're going to see big declines, but it's not going to be evenly spread. Yeah.
00:35:10
Speaker
As for me, in the US, I take it as like the baseline of 10% dropped based on the signals around the FAFSA completion, but then I offset that a little bit. So, for example, the state of West Virginia did an emergency decree. I don't know how they...
00:35:29
Speaker
if it was a law or just the governor's allowed to decree something. But they essentially, the state is going to step in and cover financial losses for students saying, don't worry about FAFSA, you're not getting the answer on what aid is there. We, the state, are going to make it so much easier to give you the aid you need.
00:35:50
Speaker
And then you look at Indiana, I don't know what they're doing, but their gap is only 2.5% now. They're almost to the level they were last year. So I think individual states, that's another, there's a geographic spread on how it's going. But I think that'll push it down. So I keep saying 5% to 10% is my guess on total enrollment drops for the fall. But that's a devastating drop. And it's a devastating drop because most of that, it's not just rural, it's a lower income and first generation students.
00:36:19
Speaker
And those are going to be hard to get back into the system afterwards. But yeah, I say five to 10% drop in the fall, which will be devastating and huge.
Political Reception of Enrollment Declines
00:36:31
Speaker
The story going forward for a while is my guess. Yeah. And I think it's
00:36:37
Speaker
interesting you know the point you're making about different states and what they do i think one of the interesting things about the kind of decline and what that means is the extent to which those that can help are willing to help or whether they might maybe look on and cheer is probably a bit too strong but you know in the political realm kind of see the contraction of higher education as as a good thing and certainly that is
00:37:04
Speaker
one aspect of the kind of narrative over here. So I think that's another interesting dimension, this kind of predicting, you know, what is going to happen, but then that's predicting how that's going to be received and whether it's another kind of
00:37:20
Speaker
again this is a bit too strong but i can't think of a better way of putting it and nailing the coffin to higher education because you know there there are certainly people over here who would look on the failure and the closure of some higher education institutions and the decline in numbers as not necessarily being a bad thing because there's a perception over here maybe there's too many people going to university there's too many there's too many providers so
00:37:47
Speaker
There's also that element of, okay, if this happens, how is it going to be received? Are people going to, you know, either kind of relevant agencies and government or whatever it might be, going to seek to kind of make an effort to come to the rescue or not? Well, one thing I would say that I'm seeing over here, today's Department of Education, here's my biggest compliment for them.
00:38:11
Speaker
They're uniters, not dividers. They've gotten people on both sides of the political aisle saying the same things, saying, this is going to be devastating for schools. This is not good for our society. This is going to harm low income students more than others. So for the mainstream, of course there are going to be some people sniping, but the main political discourse I'm hearing here, we're not seeing that now.
Political Consensus on Education Challenges
00:38:38
Speaker
You know, that might change in the future, but, um, I'm not saying that, but Morgan, am I being too optimistic here or are you saying the same thing? No, I, I, I'm still seeing the same thing, uh, in, in, in general. And, and yes, they are definitely uniters because they've, they've got me agreeing with Virginia Fox, which I never thought would happen. So signals are often complicated, just, you know, thinking I live in Utah, I live in salt lake city. And in terms of Utah.
00:39:05
Speaker
faffs of completion numbers. The high school down the street from where I live is the worst in terms of the gap between people last year and this year. And it's a comfortable suburb
00:39:21
Speaker
And Utahns traditionally hate debt. So maybe students have said, oh, well, you know, the heck with it, I'm not going to fill in FAF, so I'm just going to go, you know, and, and so, you know, there, there are some confusing signals there, but I think apart from
00:39:37
Speaker
West
Future Enrollment Trends: UK Focus
00:39:38
Speaker
Virginia. Is that Governor Justice, which has to be one of the best names for a legislator ever? He was destined to... He's a cartoon dog governor. I believe that is. It's marvelous, I think, that kind of title.
00:39:53
Speaker
Actually, I want to put a Neil on the hot seat. How do you think the UK enrollment picture is going to settle out in the fall? Because you're talking about a decline demographically based, but you also mentioned the 80% drop in student visa application. I don't know how big the percentage of international students is, how much that mixes it, but everything combined, what's the best guess about enrollment for the fall?
00:40:19
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think the headline decline will be in international students on campus are hard to know what that will equate to in terms of a percentage. I think we might see a slight dip UK wise, but I don't think it's going to be significant, but I think the headline is going to be international on campus.
00:40:43
Speaker
You know, we had data recently on international offshore, so international students studying at a UK university, but not ever coming to UK. And that's kind of had a generally kind of steady increase over the years. And just thinking about the way in which universities are, you know, looking to different markets, I think that that will kind of hold up. But I think, you know, I think it's kind of a dead cert that we will see
00:41:10
Speaker
a decline in international enrollments but I'm not sure how that equates to percentage but I think the UK will hold fairly strong. I guess the benefit for UK higher education in respect to that in terms of sentiment and how it's perceived is that they can point to government policy being one of the big drivers behind that rather than it being something that's kind of more existential to do with
00:41:37
Speaker
universities and their kind of value proposition if I can put it like that but yeah I think that's where we'll see the drop but yeah hard hard to know because I think you know some of the visa stuff really the peak is kind of around august time so inevitably we'll know more as things as things elapse
00:41:56
Speaker
Well, given your data sources, we should have a very clear picture about fall of 2024 by around 2027.
Concluding Thoughts on Education's Future
00:42:04
Speaker
That's when we should have the data. I would say to listeners, look out for that podcast, because then you'll get... Find out what the answer was. We needed a DeLorean, I think. A right-hand drive DeLorean. Yes.
00:42:19
Speaker
So that sort of, I mean, I guess I get to the question for us, when will we know? Because, I mean, there's a lot of unknowns here. We're making guesses on what it's going to be. But, you know, it could be that everybody pulling together, doing heroics is going to have a bigger impact than we expect.
00:42:36
Speaker
And my guess is that we will start having actual data near the end of August. So it won't be the formal report, but I think that we'll have a lot of anecdotal data on the yes, no question.
00:42:52
Speaker
Is the FAFSA-based drop in enrollment as bad as people fear? Or is it not near, you know, or is it in the noise? I think we'll know that the end of August is when we'll get those signs over at this point. And I hate to see it, but I mean, I think we need an accurate description both
00:43:11
Speaker
Well, both, it's enrollment, it's overall finances, but then it's also, I just keep going back to the key path and to the to you and to the guild. The whole ed tech supporting industry is facing massive change. And you were mentioning some others, Morgan. I don't know if you mentioned any names, but you're hearing this in other companies as well.
00:43:34
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Some ear cutbacks and layoffs and those sorts of things. Nothing that I can really pin to. It's the word of mouth and the layoff sites that are doing this, but hearing it elsewhere as well.
00:43:52
Speaker
Well, it's going to be an interesting year. I guess if we could have a DeLorean that would transport us one year from now to the late spring of 2025, hopefully we'll have a lot better news to report on. But this is, I think, going to be, certainly in the US, it's going to be a defining story through the fall. Well, I think it's going to continue after that. And we're going to have to keep track of what that means for edtech, for online education, and for the health of institutions.
00:44:19
Speaker
Well, it's great talking to you guys, and thank you for all of our listeners. A reminder, send us emails to email at oeaa.fm with request, and we're going to try to do an email Q&A essentially, address your questions in an upcoming episode. But thanks, and we will talk to you guys later.