Keene State College continues to have enrollment issues. But on a positive note, they’ve made that problem (sort of, kind of) go away by renaming it. The perennial decrease has been relabeled. The ten percent of staff the college had to buy out to avoid firing them outright can rest easy knowing they were ‘Right-sized’ out of their jobs.
Related: The Keene State College Budget Crisis Evolution
Image Credit: NHPR
The Road to Right-Sizing is Paved with…
Keene State accumulated significant debt when parents and students (without any warning) starting the ‘right-sizing’ of Keene State after the campus riot in 2014. They stopped applying. Fewer students less tuition money. Less money, without adjusting costs, equals more debt. The campus culture was not immediately available for comment so why not blame the legislature.
If I remember correctly, the previous college president blamed the money problems on the legislature too, but I fail to see how, if enrollment is the problem how is anyone but the college itself to blame?
That’s not to say that the State college system isn’t always begging for money. But the situation in Keene demonstrates precisely why free handouts are not the solution. If legislators ask taxpayers to bail out a failing product, what incentive does it have to improve the product and compete?
None.
Help in the form of your money is on the way
The incoming NH Democrat Majority will be piling money into the budget for the state college system. They’ll argue that tuition is too high. That taxpayers need to prop up Keene State College, UNH, Plymouth State Etcetera. That it is critical to the state economy. Except for the part where it is not.
Enrolment has been in decline for years. Keene State is in the worst shape. But during this same period, New Hampshire’s economy has exploded. Record labor force participation. Record employment. A significant rise in incomes. Record low minimum wage workers.
The evidence suggests that lower taxes have kick-started the economy. Raising taxes puts that growth at risk and makes no economic sense given that declining enrollment has had no obvious impact on the state economy, and neither have staff reductions.
Meanwhile Back at Keene State
Despite all this ‘right-sizing’ NHPR reports that Keene hit its (much lower) enrollment goal. How’d the do that?
“The new administration has made a real concerted effort about right-sizing Keene State.” said Peggy Richmond, the school’s admissions director. “This is the right size for Keene State.”
Though total applications fell this year, the school saw an increase in the percentage of admitted students who chose to enroll. That reflects a strong effort over the past several months to engage with prospective students, Richmond said, and is an optimistic sign for the college.
You have declining enrollment despite deciding to accept more students from a declining pool of applicants. A pool that is diminished, according to the same article, because “local high school class sizes, and therefore general application pools, have shrunk.”
The solution to which – also coming soon from the incoming Democrat legislature – is not right-sizing. It is demanding more spending on public education. Because nothing makes people have more kids than giving liberal teachers and administrators more money.
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