Belhaven University
Millsaps College recently announced program cuts due to lower student enrollment in recent years. But it’s hardly the only higher education institution facing economic headwinds.
Small private schools in Mississippi and around the country are dealing with similar recruiting and financial hurdles as they try to compete with cheaper public universities, and grapple with a lower college-age population overall.
Nationwide, college enrollment is down more than 2 million students since the last peak in 2011. Though not as drastic a decline as other states, Mississippi’s higher education enrollment also dropped by several thousand students from 2016 to 2018.
So how are some of Mississippi’s small colleges doing? Nonprofit filings indicate somewhat better than in many other parts of the country.
Filings show Belhaven in Jackson — which has steadily opened satellite campuses around the region — has consistently grown revenue in recent years, though it declined slightly to $64 million in 2017, the most recent available. It’s unclear how overall enrollment has trended in recent years, and a spokesman did not respond to requests for additional information. The school reports more than 5,000 students overall, including 1,200 undergraduates on its Jackson campus.
The Clinton college’s enrollment is just over 5,000, including graduate and law students. It’s grown from 4,700 a decade ago and about 3,200 students 15 years ago. Overall revenue has trended upward in recent years, filings show, surpassing $100 million in 2014. However it was down slightly in 2017, to $113 million, the most recent report available. A spokeswoman did not respond to a request for additional details.
With an enrollment of about 800, the small Jackson school’s revenue has held relatively steady, just under $30 million, for several years, thanks to a consistent amount of contributions and income from tuition and other program services most years, filings show. A spokeswoman said she was not aware of any pending program cuts, as similarly-sized Millsaps recently announced.
Revenues at the Hattiesburg-based college have trended upward in recent years, topping out at $69 million in the fiscal year ending in 2018 after taking a dip the year before. A recent audit report noted enrollment has “remained stable, with even a modest increase” in recent years. It presently stands at about 4,800.
The small Holly Springs campus, with an enrollment of roughly 1,000, brought in close to $19 million in 2017, up about $2 million from the year before. Its revenues have gone up and down in the past decade, thanks to fluctuating income from tuition and other program services.
Many schools will only face more financial challenges going forward.
Moody’s Investors Service said in a recent report that colleges, especially small ones, will witness slowing enrollment through 2027. Nationwide, the number of high school graduates will effectively flat line — although in the South it’s expected to grow slightly. The declining birthrate in the U.S. will continue to hurt colleges down the road, too. One economist predicted the population heading off to college will drop by 15 percent by the late-2020s.
More: What’s happening at Millsaps College? Declining enrollment forces cuts, frustrating alumni and students
Meanwhile, competition is anticipated to increase from online programs and big public universities. The Millsaps president cited competition from public schools as a primary reason for its challenges. A number of universities around the South have opened honors colleges in recent years that can compete directly with students who might consider attending a liberal arts school.
Many private colleges already have been forced to close, a separate Moody’s report said. About 11 are shuttering a year, the 2018 analysis said, and that average amount is expected to climb. About 20 percent of all small private colleges presently face “fundamental” financial stress.
A common factor is lower enrollment and tuition revenues. Increasingly, another report said, private colleges are discounting first-year tuition to encourage students to attend.
Liberal arts colleges’ “small size, their comparatively high cost, and sometimes even their traditional pitches about the lifelong value of a liberal-arts education work against them now, making their situation even more precarious than that of many larger institutions,” a 2016 story in The Chronicle of Higher Education reported.
Contact Luke Ramseth at 601-961-7050 or lramseth@gannett.com. Follow @lramseth on Twitter.
Belhaven University
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