Towards knowing and not knowing why some public, regional universities grow

And maybe having to take them at their word?

In my previous post, I wrote about my first effort to identify why some public, regional universities had growing enrollments and others didn’t.

I’m going to try to take another hack at it this week. Last time, my sample included nearly 400 institutions. This time, I am going to narrow it down to just 19.

This set of institutions saw undergraduate enrollment grow by at least 25% between 2012 and 2022 and overall enrollment grow by at least 15%. Since undergraduate enrollment is often seen as the core of long-term stability, I wanted to give that metric precedence.

These are the outliers. While three out of four regional, public universities did not experience any growth over the period, this sub-set saw exceptional growth. Perhaps, I thought, by looking at the outliers you can learn something about why some institutions are growing and others aren’t.

LSU-Alexandria grew very quickly, but it’s not (just) because they have a nice pool.

The First Cut Is the Deepest

I was talking about this with my dad recently, and he recommended I focus on one variable first: age. Not the age of students, but the age of the institution.

I was initially dismissive of this, as I didn’t think states were really founding and expanding regional universities anymore. The narrative of sector decline had so permeated my mind that I couldn’t imagine a different one. But I checked anyway.

As it turned out, nine of the nineteen high-growth institutions saw major structural changes during or shortly before the period under review.

Nevada State, UC-Merced, and Texas-Rio Grande Valley all came into existence within a decade of 2012. It makes sense that they would see rapid growth because they were still new institutions settling into their capacity.

Similarly, LSU-Alexandria, Hawaii-West Oahu, Washington-Bothell, and Washington-Tacoma all became 4-year programs within a decade of 2012. Previously, they had all been “senior colleges,” institutions which only educate undergraduates for the second two-year period. They were designed to receive junior college/community college graduates so they could complete bachelor’s degrees. The senior college, however, has gone out of fashion and these four decided they needed to grow their own undergrads instead of relying on transfers.

Lastly, SUNY-Polytechnic and Albany State both experienced mergers with other colleges during this period. So their enrollment grew because they were absorbing another institution.

I’m happy to discount these organization-come-latelys, but what about the other ten who have no such easy explanation?

A brief aside on variables (and why I fear them)

There is lots of information available about universities. Each piece of information can be used to form variables and compare with other universities. The issue with any comparative analysis, though, is knowing when not to use a variable.

For example, I could look at my list of institutions and sort them by research level. I could separate by Carnegie Classification, distinguishing bachelor’s colleges from the master’s colleges from the research universities. Maybe I’d see some trends. Maybe I could get some arrows pointing some ways.

But unless I can demonstrate a clear connection of the phenomena with its source, I could be misinterpreting relations as causal when they are coincidental.

It may be that the Carnegie Classification of an institution just so happens to sufficiently overlap with another set of variables that are actually causal. I can select this as a visible variable, but it carries many invisible variables which have their own unclear degrees of influence.

Every time you add a variable to an analysis, you gain the potential for added clarity. Of course, you also gain the potential for added obscurity by conflation. With complicated, real-world organisms like universities, it’s hard to have clear lines separating all your potential variables.

This is frustrating because it often means that unless you already know why something changes, it’s hard to learn why that thing changes.

I may not understand what’s happening at CSU- San Marcos, but I can say confidently that they have some cool architecture.

Some answers are less partial than others

All that is to say: I could not identify a simple variable that could answer why these last ten institutions grew. At least, I couldn’t identify one that didn’t seem to hold too much risk of hiding different variables of equal significance.

Instead, I tried to see if anyone else knew, so I Googled aggressively. I don’t think I got full answers, but there are some partial ones.

Central State University (great name, very catchy) and Texas- Permian Basin both attribute their growth to “free college” programs. Central State’s came from local unions paying the difference in Pell Grant funding to recruit future employees. UT-PB’s was part of a system-wide funding program to recruit Texas residents to the regional campuses.

I think it’s fair to at least attribute much of Central State’s growth to that program because the program expired after 2022. Since then, the institution’s enrollment has been tumbling and they would not rank highly if I’d used numbers from 2024. That rapid decline seems to indicate a relationship. UT-PB’s program is still going, and I imagine it has a similar effect.

And some are stabs in the dark

Another group here shares a few traits. North Carolina A&T, Alabama A&M, and Bowie State are all HBCUs. Since 2020, HBCUs as a sector have seen a surge of interest. And it’s not just from students. NC A&T and Bowie State both received tens of millions of dollars in donations from Mackenzie Scott (formerly Bezos) in 2020, a move which led to increased donations sector-wide for HBCUs.

There are lots of HBCUs who aren’t on this list though. So, while those factors may be meaningful, they aren’t sufficient. If you ask North Carolina A&T about their growth, they say that they recruited well in-state and new programs helped to retain students. I’m sure that’s true! But does that account for becoming the fastest-growing and highest ranked public HBCU in the country? I’m not sure it does. But I also don’t know what else could explain it simply.

Is Rowan growing because they were recently designated as a comprehensive university? They say that’s a big reason why, but is that really what gets the high schoolers revved up these days? Maybe?!

Is CSU-Dominguez Hills growing because they built a lot of new buildings which are very nice? They seem to say so, but would they be building that much if they weren’t expecting to grow beforehand? I’m not sure!

Did Farmingdale State grow its undergraduate body by 25% because it offers more academic supports to at-risk students? They appear to think so. That seems to be too big a change to have that as its primary cause… but I also have no other theories.

Is Texas A&M International University growing because its host city, Laredo, Texas, saw population increases over 30% for each of the four previous decades? Maybe! But lots of cities are growing fast, and the regional institutions in those cities don’t necessarily reflect that.

Beneath the surface

What I’m realizing is that even when I cut a sample down from 391 to 19, there’s still more complexity here than I can do justice for in a single blog post. Upsetting, I know.

I can learn some things. For example, it’s easier to grow over a ten year period if you’re founded at the beginning of that ten year period. But that’s not exactly revelatory.

I am sure there are reasons that these programs grew so much faster than their peers. I’m open to theories, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to know.

I’m not sure the universities know either. And if asked to, I’m not sure they could replicate it elsewhere.

Generally speaking, I’m not sure.

-Matt