Dive Brief:
- The New York Times breaks down the five biggest winners and losers in out-of-state student enrollment across the country, according to data on incoming freshman in the class of 2014 as collected by the US Department of Education.
- Pennsylvania, Alabama, Arizona, Ohio and South Carolina took in the most students from beyond their borders, with between 7,000 to 8,700 new students reporting two years ago.
- California, Illinois, New Jersey, Texas and New York each lost between 10,000 and 17,000 students to other states.
Dive Insight:
It is worth noting that a majority of the "loser" states are also among the most heavily populated in the nation. Still, costs, athletic success, majors and industries could all be reasons why students decide to leave a particular state, and where they choose to wind up. In the winning column, there are trends in each of these areas which, when viewed in the spectrum of being neighboring states to some of the biggest losers, seems to be a logical explanation.
But colleges which are losing thousands of students to four-year institutions could be seeing increased pipelines from community colleges in-state, and in the effort to increase pipeline articulation agreements with other in-state colleges, such as those being developed by the University of Texas at Austin. There are a lot more stories to enrollment trends than just who leaves and who stays, but colleges are best suited in focusing upon who replaces the departed.