James Loy:

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast by the hosts and guests may or may not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Miami University. This is reframe the podcast from the college of education, health, and society on the campus of Miami University, in Oxford, Ohio.

There's a lot of myths out there about college and about the college experience in general. Some you may have heard some myths like college is only for people who may be naturally smart or that it's only for young people or that it's only for people who are seeking a four year degree. But there's a lot about college and about college students that's just not true today or at least it's no longer as true as it used to be. In the past, we might have viewed the typical college student as someone who attends college right out of high school, picks a major studies the course and graduates in four years with a degree from a single institution. But this traditional experience, this traditional pathway is not nearly as common as you may think.

Jason Lane:

The idea of the four year college experience is more and more referred to as the post-traditional experience. There's still a large number of institutions like Miami University that provide a high quality four year experience and that a majority of students stay there for the entire four years. But if you look at the entire ecosystem of higher education, most students today will attend at least two institutions. But what we're seeing increasingly is students are moving in all sorts of directions. They're actually moving from a community college to community colleges, they're moving from four year institutions to four year institutions. And some even do what we call reverse transfer. They may start at a four year institution and then reverse back and go to a two year institution. And so there's all sorts of different ways in which students move, but it's more than a majority of students today.

James Loy:

That's Jason Lane, the dean of Miami University's College of Education, Health and Society. And he's back to talk more about transfer students, why we need to do much more to help them succeed and how it can help universities remain viable in an increasingly hyper competitive landscape. Because right now there's also another serious problem looming just over the horizon. There's no avoiding it and we're racing right towards it. It's called the enrollment cliff. And it might just be as scary as it sounds and not just for colleges and universities, but for society at large.

Bethany Perkins:

Our country and this world face pretty significant challenges moving forward. And if we don't have more college educated people helping solve these high level, really difficult problems collaboratively, which I think we learn very well in a college environment, then I would struggle to see more hope for us.

James Loy:

That's Bethany Perkins. She is the assistant vice president and director of admission at Miami and she'll talk more about this dreaded enrollment cliff as well as how increasing student transfer success and streamlining the overall college experience for students may be the key to solving what's being called one of the most critical issues now facing higher education.

In a recent report, Jason Lane and his co-authors discussed this problem in much more detail as well as some solutions for colleges and universities and their students. Dean Lane, can you talk about this issue from a high level perspective? What does the report cover? Why is this issue important? I think a lot of times we think about transfer students, it seems on the surface pretty straightforward. A student goes to one institution and then moves to another. So why is this such an issue in higher education today?

Jason Lane:

Yeah, sure. This is one of the most critical issues higher education has been facing, not just now but probably the last 40 years. Increasingly, students are what we call swirling among institutions. They're moving back and forth. They're trying to transfer credit, they're trying to accumulate enough credits to earn a degree. And we as a sector have known for decades that that model has, we say broken. Although broken then it was fixed at one point in time. I don't think it was ever actually fixed. But we've established a system that essentially is based on the way institutions want students to transfer and not how students are actually transferring. And so what we were trying to look at was how the state systems of higher education are approaching transfer from the perspective of the student to organize systems so that this makes it easier for students to transfer among multiple institutions and not just allowing individual institutions to figure out what transfer looks like for them.

Part of what has occurred in all this is a patchwork of different policies and regulations. And so if you're a student looking at the current dynamic out there, you'll have 30 different opportunities at 30 different institutions, but you don't actually know how to vet that. You don't know what it looks like in terms of transferring credits. How much each institution will transfer in. Will they count toward a degree? And so what we were trying to analyze is really statewide approaches that make this easier for students.

James Loy:

And there's also this shift too, right? This is impacting more and more students because that traditional idea of the college experience where someone graduates high school picks a college, finds a major they like, graduates four years later and that's it. Right. That's no longer the majority of students. So what is behind that? What's behind that shift that is making that less and less common today?

Jason Lane:

A big one is that in higher ed, we've increasingly brought in what were non-traditional students, right? Students who were not out of high school, students who had families, who were supporting children, who were working professionals, increasing number of first generation college students, all of whom are balancing lots of different obligations in their life. And so the idea of going full time to a four year degree for those students is challenging. And so we tend to see students from those populations who might start at a two year and then figure out that they want to go to a four year. A lot of the concern is also around economics. And so it's becoming more and more expensive in a lot of places to be able to afford that four year degree as we've seen costs go up and loans go up. And so students are trying to cobble together experiences and grab credits where they can toward a degree.

James Loy:

In your report, you also talk a lot about how this issue is in the best interest of colleges and universities to take a really close look at and to solve or at least to take more seriously. Can you talk about why that is in their best interest to do so?

Jason Lane:

Sure. And we're seeing students increasingly coming through different pathways and as a sector I think we also have an obligation to ensure the students who we bring in are able to succeed and earn their degree. What happens a lot of times in the transfer process is that students might lose credits along the way, which means they may transfer into an institution that they go to or they may not. A lot of times they don't actually count toward their degree. So even though they may bring those credits with them, they've completed 60 credits at a associate's institution, they bring those 60 credits in, it doesn't mean all 60 will actually count toward the 120 credit hour requirement for a bachelor's degree. So they may still need to pick up another 90 credits along the way to meet their degree requirements. Well, that means it's added time and added cost at a time when college is more expensive and folks are balancing more and more obligations.

So for an institutional perspective, I think the more that institutions are leading into transfer, providing a pathway that is easy for students to navigate, that shows students that they are going to help them be successful once they get there, the more likely they're going to track those transfer students in. And even more critical in a time when we are seeing a contraction in higher education enrollments between the beginning of the pandemic and the end of the pandemic, we lost a million students in higher education. That means a million fewer students are in higher education today than they were before the pandemic. That means there's even greater competition for students. Those students are going to be more savvy about where they want to go and a lot of them are going to be transfer students.

But the more those students come into higher education, the more they're probably going to be looking at different pathways and the more support they're going to need to be successful. So as they come into a community college and then hopefully they get interested at a four year degree, we're going to have to make sure that we can provide the supports for them to be successful. Where I think we'll see the most contraction in that space is in that traditional four year college education, somebody out of high school coming into college spending all four years.

James Loy:

There's a couple of reasons why the biggest contraction of future college students will be among those coming straight out of high school. One, as we've just established, is that the traditional pathway simply no longer describes the experience of most students today. But the other reason for the decline is directly related to another dire problem. And unlike some other challenges, those that might be a little more abstract or uncertain or up for debate or maybe even only applicable to certain context, this is a problem that will soon affect all of higher education. And this is the approaching enrollment cliff. It's coming. It's just over the horizon and we know it. Can you introduce yourself one more time?

Bethany Perkins:

Yes. Bethany Perkins, assistant vice president and director of admission.

James Loy:

So can you just lay it out for us. What exactly is the enrollment cliff?

Bethany Perkins:

The enrollment cliff refers to the significant drop in college going high school graduates that will occur right after 2026. So there was a significant birth rate decline following the recession in 2009 and it never recovered. So we're going to see a 15% or more drop in graduating high school students. So when we talk about the enrollment cliff, we are talking about the doom and gloom of there being much more supply than demand for the supply in terms of seats in colleges and universities. And I think that if no colleges or institutions do anything about it, that it is as scary as it seems, but something about the inevitable at least gives clarity. So it's inevitable. We can't all of a sudden increase the birth rate and that help us at least in 2027 and beyond. So working within that clarity, we can get creative and think out of the box for how to educate different populations other than just the traditional high school graduate in order to meet our enrollment demands.

James Loy:

What would be some of the worst case scenarios or if universities just ignore it and just say, eh, business as usual and just don't do anything?

Bethany Perkins:

If universities did not do anything about it, and particularly the universities that already primarily focus on the traditional high school student, the first year student coming into college and they didn't plan, didn't change their price, didn't change their expectations in terms of how many students will enroll, those students won't show up. And when they don't show up, neither does the revenue needed for that university to function. And it's only a matter of time before colleges and universities that can meet those goals, we'll be forced to close.

James Loy:

I wonder are there some institutions that might be more insulated from this because maybe they don't have the same enrollment challenges? Because there are certain colleges and universities that just have people knocking at their door and endless lines and people who will never be able to get in. So they might not necessarily need to take this as seriously as maybe another institution elsewhere that is facing much stronger competition. So are there differences there ?

Bethany Perkins:

Are some institutions that are more isolated from this problem than others. So I'll give two examples. One, they're institutions in some much lower populated states that might heavily rely on their in-state students or students from that region that will probably be a little less impacted. And there are also institutions right now that I'll call elite. So institutions that are particularly in the top 50 in US News and World Report and even down to the top 100 that these are institutions that have not only strong regional but very strong national reach. And I won't say that these institutions, including Miami, we're right there, will not be impacted because when there is a lot of supply and less demand, guess what happens to cost? So I do think we will be impacted, but will we meet headcount? Will we have demand for a quality education at that level? Yes. But that means even more significant impact on heavily regional institutions that, particularly in the Northeast and the Midwest, look to be heavily impacted.

James Loy:

It makes me wonder if there's a related scenario happening with elite institutions and transfer students. Because I can imagine, and I don't know, that's why I'm posing the question that maybe there's like certain mid-level state schools that get many more transfer students from their local area community college, whereas an elite institution might be much more selective to just the four year traditional student. Or are we at a certain point that maybe now even elite institutions should start taking transfer students more seriously and seek to recruit them more actively?

Jason Lane:

It's a great question and we actually see it's all over the board. There are some elite institutions, well-known institutions, flagship public state institutions that are well set up for transfer, and there are some that aren't. There are a lot of mid-level regional institutions that do really well at transfer, and there are many that do not. It really is institution dependent in a number of ways. I would say our small liberal arts institutions where they have that traditional four year experience is where you're least likely to see a large number of transfer students come into play. But it seems today all institutions are looking at this very, very carefully. It's an important enrollment growth for four year institutions to be able to pick up students. And what's interesting about what we see at the state level now, at these systems of higher education, and just to clarify for our listeners, right? A system of higher education is one where you have multiple institutions governed by a single governing board.

Unlike Miami that has... Well, Miami is a small system. Right. Miami actually has three campuses under one governing board. Or you might think about a SUNY system in New York where there are 64 campuses all under a single governing board. And so they can set policies across all those institutions. Think about SUNY, where I spent a good chunk of my career. Those 64 campuses, 30 of them are community colleges. And then you have a set of regional comprehensives and you have research universities. What they've done is really advanced a seamless transfer pathway so that no matter where you transfer within SUNY, there is what they call a seamless path. There is a common set of courses across all of those institutions. Whether you go from a two year to a four year or four year to a two year, there are more than 50 degree pathways where they have set both gen ed requirements and introduction level courses for specific degrees so that students don't have to worry about figuring out there, is it different for me transferring to Albany versus Binghamton?

Will they know if they're on this pathway no matter what community college they can go to any four year in that degree and those credits will count toward those degrees? And so that's the big difference that we're seeing right now is that traditionally transfer's been very bilateral. It's been one community college working with one institution, and that community college may have 15 different articulation agreements with 15 different institutions, and each of those articulation agreements may look different. So for the students sitting at that community college trying to figure out where he or she or they want to go, it's very challenging to sort of navigate that broad array of options. And so what systems are increasingly saying is let's create one pathway that applies to all institutions. So no matter how a student transfers or where they transfer within our system, it's easy for them to navigate.

James Loy:

That makes me think of a... In marketing speak, we would call that the frictionless consumer experience.

Jason Lane:

Right. That's exactly it. Right. We talk about seamless so that we're trying to remove the leaks of the pipeline. It's easy for them to be able to move from one institution to another. But we've really built transfer on the ways in which institutions think transfer should work. And so if you look at that model, that model is primarily based upon a two plus two model where you start at one community college, you complete two years, probably earn an associate's degree and then transfer those credits into a four year institution. About only about 8% of students who transfer actually follow that model.

But that's the primary model that we have based all of transfer on. And so when you look at the work that's happening now across the United States and these systems of higher ed, they're trying to blow that model up in a way to say, what can we do differently to actually make it frictionless or seamless for students to be able to transfer, take less credits with them, make sure they can actually count toward a degree so that they're saving time and money and not extending their time toward the degree

Bethany Perkins:

Addressing the leaky pipeline of transferring credits from institution to institution. I actually think it's one of the number one solutions to helping increase enrollment, but more than anything, increasing the number of students graduating from colleges and universities with a four year degree. And that is a sign that, yes, the system is broken, but it's also an opportunity for the colleges and universities out there who see this issue to say, too, transfer students, we value you. We value the credit that you bring and we're going to make this as seamless as possible for you. And not all institutions will be prepared to serve them in that way.

James Loy:

So clearly it is in the best interest of universities to figure out a better way to facilitate this process, whether it's students moving from a two year to a four year or from a four year to another four year or whatever their situation may be, as well as fixing the leaky pipeline where credits are essentially just being left on the table to go to waste even though it took real time and money to get them in the first place. Dean Lane, but what would you say to someone who hasn't yet gone through this process, maybe a current college student who's thinking about transferring or even a prospective student who hasn't yet gone to college or their parents? What should they know? What should they be aware of or be thinking about when potentially facing this issue?

Jason Lane:

Yeah, I think for a lot of students and families, when you are thinking about... If you know in advance that you may transfer from one institution to another, and that's often the case we see with students who go to a two year degree to your college, they may want to be looking at a four year degree. It's from the very outset identifying what the policies are and the procedures are for that transfer, identifying who are the most transfer friendly institutions, beginning to think through what does it mean to transfer to a four year institution, what are the ones that have an ecosystem in place to make sure they can be successful? And working with advisors early on at the community college to identify what the pathways are, where are those agreements that are in place to ensure that credits actually transfer?

James Loy:

And also, what would you want other higher education institutions or leaders to take away from either your recent report or from this conversation? What should they be thinking about as far as how to remove some of the barriers around this?

Jason Lane:

I think the biggest thing in all of this is to think increasingly about what we like to call systemness. And that is how do we as institutions collaborate with each other to ensure student success? How do we create processes and procedures that are focused on the student and the ways in which students are experiencing higher education and not the ways in which we think the students should be experiencing higher education? I think we create a lot of artificial barriers for students. In fact, I often like to say we need to stop asking why students failed and how we failed students. And I think what we're seeing in this transfer environment is that systems have a different person institutions. Institutions are able to see the mobility from one institution to another institutions, and so they create a process based on that, but that doesn't help all the students that might be in a state.

And so systems actually can sit above all these institutions and see what that flow looks like in a more holistic way. And I think there is a message here for higher education in general, is that we do increasingly need to take a step back from our institutional views. We need to think more systematically about the ways in which students are coming into higher education, how we can collaborate, how we can not just move credits around, but maybe how we can share courses, how we can think about the ways in which we admit students to both a two year and a four year at the same time. But increasingly, we're seeing collaboration across multiple institutions across whole states, thinking about ways that we can move students and credits around in different ways. There's always inherently some competition in all of this, but I think we really need to be starting to focus increasingly on what is best for our students in this country, and how do we create a system that is going to power them to be successful.

James Loy:

And I also know there is some work being done around this right now currently. Can you talk about what is being done here at Miami and even regionally to specifically address and fix some of the problems and challenges that we've been talking about today?

Jason Lane:

One of the things that's really interesting to me is that the work we did was really looking at the systems of higher education because they have a formal governing structure in place. But what we're also seeing is increasingly regional collaboration. And so take for example, what we call the Moon Shot for Equity, which is a partnership that Miami has entered into with other institutions across southwest Ohio. It's being powered by EAB. And the whole idea is how do we actually support students in a way that allow them to move more seamlessly between institutions in southwest Ohio?

And so what we're seeing now are institutions that aren't formal systems actually beginning to collaborate in a way that allow students to more easily move credits between institutions. We are now working with other two year partners in the state to try to coordinate students so that they might start at Cincinnati State, but they could also be quasi Miami students. So they begin to get experience out here. We're looking at ways that we can more efficiently evaluate transfer credit so that students know what they're going to be able to transfer in before they actually apply and say, Yes, I'm coming to Miami. So Miami's really trying to lean in on this and become a more transfer friendly institution because we know it's an important part of our role in this as a public institution ensuring that students have access to the Miami degree.

James Loy:

Wonderful. Well, thank you so much.

Jason Lane:

Absolutely. Thank you.

James Loy:

Jason Lane is the dean of Miami University's College of Education, Health and Society. Also, we want to give a special thanks to Bethany Perkins for her input and insight on this issue as well. And this is the Reframe podcast. Thank you so much for listening. We have many more episodes available right now, wherever podcasts are found.