So what is to be done?
Enrollment isn’t colleges’ biggest problem. It’s completion. It’s still the case that nearly a third of students at four-year institutions don’t have a degree after six years. And these students disproportionately come from lower-income backgrounds. Students from the lowest income families have about an 11 percent chance of graduating from college within six years.
There are, of course, many reasons why students drop out or fail out. The factors that the public often blames for this — academic unpreparedness and disengagement among students and misplaced priorities among faculty — however, turn out to be far less important than non-academic factors. These include cost, including opportunity costs, competing demands on students’ time, wasted credits (when students transfer or shift majors), various life issues, and a lack of a sense of belonging. Transportation issues, childcare issues, work and family responsibilities, add to the challenge.
So what is to be done?
Many of today’s most highly touted answers, such as predictive analytics and behavioral nudges, however helpful, turn out to be less significant than simpler nuts-and-bolts matter that colleges have a great deal of control over: course scheduling and availability, degree pathways, academic requirements, pedagogy, and the structure of student support services.