UNK is one of the many colleges across the U.S. preparing for a drop in enrollment called the enrollment cliff. According to the UNK handbook, fall enrollment has been steadily declining over the past 10 years.
Kelly Bartling, the vice chancellor for enrollment management and marketing, said one of the most important strategies UNK is using to combat this decline is teamwork.
“If college-going is down and demographic growth is down, what do we need to do?” Bartling said. “Collaborating as a campus and making sure that everybody is working toward the same focus areas is really important. So, we have a strategic enrollment committee that meets and we talk about growth ideas, recruitment, retention, marketing – all of that stuff. So, collaboration is really important.”
According to the UNK handbook, there was a 2.3% decrease in fall enrollment from 2023 to 2024. Last year, 6,017 students were enrolled, and this year, 5,881 were enrolled.
Bartling said this decline in enrollment is unavoidable and is due to many factors.
“It’s inevitable,” Bartling said. “Colleges will close, and it’s not just because of the demographic slowdown, it’s because of other things as well. There’s questioning of the value of a four-year degree, and there’s a lot of rhetoric and distrust surrounding the institution of higher education. We need to be doing more to talk to people about (it). It’s not just finding that first job and getting a high wage, it’s educating yourself and learning how to become a lifelong learner.”
One department playing a key role in raising enrollment at UNK is the admissions office.
Jodi Holt, the director of admissions, said putting more of a focus on recruiting students out of state is important, as well as aiming more efforts toward areas in Nebraska where UNK already has high success rates with.
Holt said focusing on things the university can control is key to recruiting during the cliff.
“We can’t control how many high school kids there are in Nebraska,” Holt said. “Since we can’t control that, the enrollment cliff doesn’t necessarily directly change the way we recruit students or our strategies. What does remain to be true is the enrollment cliff means there is more competition for fewer students, which means students have more things to listen to. So, we’re cutting through the noise with, in our case, a genuine and transparent presentation of who UNK is.”
Bartling highlighted the need for UNK to reach outside the boundaries of our state, and how the New Nebraskan Scholarship can aid with that.
“[For] some of the other states who are near Nebraska and who know of Nebraska, we need to get in front of those students so they’re aware of the New Nebraskan Scholarship,” Bartling said. “That’s the discount where any undergraduate student in the U.S. can come to UNK and pay the Nebraska rate, which is really huge for those expensive state school kids, like in Colorado. They can come here to Nebraska way cheaper.”
In the future, Holt said the small enrollment crew will have to be more mindful of where their efforts are being focused in order to take on this challenge.
“We have one of the smallest recruitment operations in the state,” Holt said. “We have fewer admissions staff than almost every other higher institution in the state, so we’re lean and we have to be even more strategic. I don’t know that what we say changes, but where we say it and when we say it may shift.”
Despite having a compact crew, Bartling said UNK is doing a better job at faring the cliff than some universities.
“I think that we are doing better than some of our peers,” Bartling said. “When I look at institutions like UNK in the midwest, our MIAA peers and our board of regents peers, we’re losing at a lower rate than many of the institutions who are like us. So, if that is a measure of how well we are performing relative to institutions like ours, I would say we’re doing pretty good.”
Getting students to enroll at UNK during the cliff is important, but Bartling said getting them to enjoy their time here is just as critical.
The student affairs department also plays a role in helping to draw students into UNK. When there’s positive feedback from current students, others are drawn to campus.
George Holman, the associate vice chancellor of student affairs, said a reduction in enrollment results in reduced funding.
While this impacts the staffing in the student affairs department, Holman said UNK does its best to not let this impact students.
“Where it’s impacted us is obviously there are fewer students for us to serve, but there’s fewer resources also to serve those students,” Holman said. “Our goal throughout all of these staffing changes is to make it so students don’t know that we’ve had to do some of these things.”
Bartling said decreased funding due to lower enrollment rates impacts many other areas outside of just student affairs.
“The biggest challenge that we’re facing because of declining enrollment is the impact on revenue,” Bartling said. “We have coordinating commission standards that we need to meet in order to continue to offer programs. When we fall under enrollment in those areas, then we’re faced with needing to cut programs. That is so difficult. We wish that we were able to be everything for everybody here at UNK, but there are programs that aren’t in as high demand as they used to be, and we can’t continue to keep offering them if students aren’t interested in those anymore.”
According to Bartling, UNK will work to strengthen areas that are already performing positively in order to combat the effects of the enrollment cliff.
“We need to capitalize on our strengths,” Bartling said. “We’re highly successful with first-generation college students, honors, the Thompson scholars and programs like Health Science. So understanding what we’re really good at, investing in those areas and investing in recruiting for those areas is really important. We’re not cheap, we’re low cost, but we’re a good value because we’re high quality and low cost.”
Bartling said the main way students can help combat this decline in enrollment is through word of mouth.
“If you love UNK, tell people that,” Bartling said. “I think our best recruiters are people like you and the students here, and seeing the outcome of what is going to happen when you graduate here, take your skills and hands-on learning out into the workforce, reminding people that UNK is important to the community of Kearney, and to the state of Nebraska. Help share the word about UNK.”
