Naomi Girson | opinions editor

The peak of collegiate enrollment in the United States was 21 million students in 2010, but between decreased birth rates during the 2008 recession and the COVID-19 pandemic, there has yet to be another pinnacle, according to the Education Data Initiative.

Lester Lusher, associate professor of public economics at the University of Pittsburgh, said that in general, economic studies have shown more people attend college when there is an economic downturn when people are more panicked about their economic future. When opportunities are weak and the job market is bad, students are pushed to enroll at universities.

“There’s much stronger empirical evidence that a big motivator or that economic downturn gets people back into school,” Lusher said.

The economy as of now is not facing a textbook recession, and the unemployment rate stands at 4.3%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Although the decline is a national trend, Duquesne is “demographically resilient” according to Joel Bauman, vice president of enrollment management.

“The North East, in particular, the old rust belt, has been experiencing demographic declines in 18-year-olds for a decade,” Bauman said. “Also, exacerbating that is the college-going rates of high school graduates. So even though there may be more students graduating from high school, lower percentages of them are choosing to go to college or four-year college. So that’s what they call the demographic cliff.”

Bauman said there is a distinct difference between admitted students to Duquesne and the committed students, and there is a science to divulge an estimation of how many accepted students in a given year will commit and enroll at Duquesne.

The incoming class of fall 2025 had around 1,400 admitted first-time freshmen students, and over 13,000 first-year applicants, the most in the university’s history, according to Bauman.  

Students in a 250-mile radius of the school are more likely to commit than those from out of state, at almost any institution, so factors like that play into their daily work.

“We’ll admit more from out of state to make sure that you have a vibrant and diverse group of students that challenge you in the classroom and support the faculty and give you different viewpoints,” Bauman said. “We also monitor weekly, some predictive models that say, if we are over performing in a particular area, we can pull back.”

Their main tactics for combating the cliff are to remain strong in their infrastructure and their academic offerings to incoming prospective students, including the new college of osteopathic medicine, engineering programs and real estate.

Duquesne is not alone in the climb, with Point Park University having an increase in enrollment this fall.

Marlin Collingwood, vice president of enrollment management at Point Park, said their enrollment increased by 20% just in the last semester.

They currently have a deal with the Wyndham Grand hotel in Downtown Pittsburgh to house 90 of their students for the remainder of the semester.

“We were anticipating all along that we thought we could have a class that was this large. We were not anticipating that we have as many 18-year-olds … who we provide housing for. It’s a great problem to have.
In fact, it’s an opportunity. So, that created the housing situation.”

They were expecting to see more transfers living off campus but were happy to accommodate all the freshmen and their needed housing, Collingwood said.

He said he was ecstatic that their enrollment was so high and said they have a goal of 30% overall increased enrollment by 2030. They are already two-thirds of the way there.

According to Collingwood, in the last two years, Point Park heavily changed the way it marketed their campus, and tried, successfully thus far, to appeal to those who really want an urban experience right in the heart of Downtown. Specifically, Collingwood said they had many students from rural areas both near and far from the school.

Enrollment trends are fluctuating but not so many universities have to completely change gears. In fact, according to Lusher, in the economic world, higher education is an under-investment for many, and there is instead empirical evidence that college is worth the debt and loans.

He touched on affordability, but said the evidence on any relation between tuition rates and enrollment was less clear, and he said although student debt can be a big pill to swallow, data shows students tend to under-invest in higher education.

“So generally the consensus — among economists — is that there’s a set of students who don’t get the higher education degree or maybe only two years, let’s just say, when [it] would have been better for themselves and for society, [to get] a four-plus year degree,” Lusher said.

Naomi Girson can be reached at girsonn@duq.edu