Bucking the Trend in Higher Education

While the state and nation have seen declines in enrollment, the Capital Region has seen a spike in public college and university enrollment. Is the trend sustainable?

It’s no secret that dwindling higher education enrollment is a looming workforce issue both here in Louisiana and more broadly across the nation. Recently, The Public Affairs Research Council (PAR) released a report lamenting not only a drop in public college enrollment over the past few years, but also the impact that declining birthrates will likely have on future enrollment. Nationally, since 2017, data shows a 9% decrease in undergraduate enrollment. Since this data includes both four-year institutions as well as community and technical colleges, it seems safe to say there are fewer people in the workforce pipeline than there were a half-decade ago.

Regionally, though, our public colleges and universities have showed resiliency when it comes to enrollment. Despite a 2% decline in enrollment in Louisiana Board of Regents schools since 2017, our four local schools¹ have seen a 22% increase. The chart below indexes enrollment to 2017 for local schools and all public colleges and universities statewide – this allows an apples-to-apples comparison over time². The disparity in growth itself is eye-opening, especially because our region’s 22% gain is present in the statewide number.

How’d They Do It?

While it’s too complex to parse out everything that contributed to the Capital Region’s spike in enrollment as it has fallen nationally, a number of trends at the various schools gives us important insights as to what’s driving it. At Southern and LSU, out-of-state student enrollment has doubled for each institution since 2017 while the in-state population has remained steady. Five years ago, 18% of LSU’s student population came from out of state; now, out-of-state enrollees are approaching a third of students. This out-of-state growth appears to be a large part of our enrollment increase.

While Southern’s percentage of out-of-state population is slightly smaller than LSU’s, its growth has been greater. In 2017 the school had 891 total out-of-state enrollees, but by the fall of last year, that number had risen to 2,196 – an increase of 146%.

Recruiting out-of-state students is key for several reasons. For one thing, in-state enrollment has been relatively flat at both institutions, so out-of-state enrollment was vital to continued growth. It also brings out-of-state dollars into our state and regional economy rather than simply recirculating in-state income and tax dollars for student tuition and purchases. Perhaps most importantly, it helps Baton Rouge in the nationwide competition for talent. The students attending these schools from other states will be building their initial personal and professional network within our community. That, combined with the fact that they’ll already be physically residing within our metro area, means that the community will just have to retain them upon graduation, which is not as difficult as drawing people into a region in the first place. Whether it’s internships provided by the business community through platforms like Handshake, or networks built through young professional groups such as Forum 225, it’s incumbent that we ensure these out-of-state students begin to plant roots in the Capital Region while at our universities.

In addition to the growth in our universities, we also saw an enrollment increase of about 1,500 between the two public community and technical colleges in the region. The increase in enrollment is good news, but even more heartening is that the growth is in fields related to high-demand, high-wage jobs – enrollment in healthcare professions are up 18% since 2017. This is key, as there are more than 2,300 unique job postings for healthcare occupations in the Capital Region, accounting for more than 10% of all job openings³. The community and technical colleges also saw a 53% increase of enrollment in computer and information sciences programs at a time where there is a significant shortage of technology workers both in the region and the country overall. The growth in Baton Rouge Community College and River Parishes Community College comes as the state has rolled out a number of programs to encourage shorter-term training programs, such as Reboot Your Career and the M.J. Foster Promise Program.

What’s Next?

All this data reflects very positively on higher education within our region, and should rightfully be worn as a badge of honor. That being said, there are threats and caveats that we must be clear-eyed about. For instance, LSU has been a major driver in overall enrollment growth, with 38,731 students as of Fall 2022. However, the university has said publicly that a study has shown the ideal student population for its campus to be 35,000, meaning there may literally be little room to continue growth.

In addition, PAR’s admonition concerning declining birthrates is also a major concern in Louisiana and nationwide. Due to lower birthrates and outmigration, the state has seen more than a 2% decline in its under-18 population – meaning there are 27,000 fewer kids in Louisiana than there were in 2017⁴.

So far the Capital Region has been immune to this decline in childhood population, as seen in the chart above. We’ve seen an increase of 4% in our under-18 cohort, with about 7,300 more residents in that group than in 2017.  

Having a growing base of students in higher education is important for a number of reasons – educational attainment is strongly correlated to health and income, we’re in a tight labor market and need a pipeline of talent for businesses, and so on. While the region has performed well over the last few years, maintaining the success moving forward may be difficult for the reasons PAR outline in their report. Also, if we fail to retain this talent upon graduation, keeping our enrollment count up will only be a hollow victory; this highlights the importance of groups like Forum 225 and platforms like Handshake in helping college students create ties to the community while they’re here. Creating a robust talent pipeline must be top-of-mind for the region if economic growth and prosperity is a priority, as survey after survey nationally finds that talent is the largest obstacle for businesses everywhere.

1. Southern University (Southern), Louisiana State University (LSU), Baton Rouge Community College (BRCC), and River Parishes Community College (RPCC).

2. All enrollment data is from the Louisiana Board of Regents’ Statewide Student Profile.

3. Lightcast Job Posting Analytics, January 2023

4. ACS/US Census Population by Age, 2021 1-Year Data