A long-dreaded enrollment cliff is finally in view for U.S. universities, and NKU is preparing to mitigate the potential damage.
This steep drop-off, also known as the demographic cliff, is a predicted phenomenon born from a persistent downturn in the national birthrate following the 2008 Great Recession. While the dive was initially projected to be gradual, more recent projections by institutions like the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) indicate its impact on higher education could be craterous.
NKU may already be experiencing a possible foreshock. Enrollment for this fiscal year is down by 283 traditional undergraduate students, with that loss of tuition reflected in the university’s budget. President Cady Short-Thompson stated at a town hall on September 25 that the university expects this number to stabilize with an influx of transfer students.
There has been a significant investment in transfer enrollment since 2022, when NKU’s budget shortfall necessitated a shift in enrollment strategies to generate more net tuition revenue. To achieve this, NKU reorganized the Adult Learner Programs and Services (ALPS) into the Adult and Transfer Center (ATC) in March 2023. At that time, there was a 30% deficit in the number of transfer students.
“That deficit kind of culminated [from] when the actual transfer center was eliminated,” said Sara Conwell, the assistant director of advising and programming for the ATC, “There wasn’t an office that was dedicated specifically to transfer students.”
The Adult and Transfer Center immediately prioritized reestablishing connections and bolstering the existing 2NKU Partnership Programs among the 16 schools within the Kentucky Community and Technical College System (KCTCS). Cincinnati State Technical and Community College, Gateway Community and Technical College, and Ivy Tech Community College each have an assigned NKU transfer-advisor who visits the campuses twice a month to recruit and meet with potential students.
“In our first academic year, we not only filled the 30% deficit, but we also increased [transfer enrollment] by another 33%,” Conwell said.
ATC’s initiatives mark a shift from traditional enrollment methods, reflecting the changes within the student demographics. Transfer students have become a coveted resource within higher education, and the enrollment cliff could cause an already challenging landscape to become viciously competitive, with regional universities like NKU vying for KCTCS students against flagship institutions like the University of Cincinnati or the University of Kentucky.
Cincinnati State’s transfer center has already experienced an increased interest from 4-year universities, according to Dr. Myshamil Walker, the director of Cincinnati State’s Transfer Center. According to its 2024 data, 9.8% of students listed NKU as one of their schools of interest, trailing behind UC, which held 25.2%.
NKU’s Direct Admit program, established in 2024, allows students to apply to the university based on their high school GPA without fees, essays, or applications. In contrast, UC offers in-person Rapid App events that provide on-the-spot admission decisions and, crucially, also waives its application fee.
“It does come down to cost,” Walker said, “That’s always number one on [our] students’ minds.”
Cost could possibly be an upside of the demographic cliff, according to some scholars. Higher education has the potential to become a student market, with different institutions offering discounts and scholarships to fill their increasingly vacant desks. Already, some smaller liberal arts colleges have been trying to lure potential students with lowered tuition and fees.
That is something you most likely won’t see at NKU. In an interview with The Cincinnati Business Courier, President Short-Thompson cautioned against what she described as “over-discounting” tuition, calling it a “race to the bottom.”
Ryan Padgett, NKU’s Chief Strategic Enrollment Management Officer, further explained that perspective, saying, “There’s a thinking that the best way to attract students to your universities at the regional level is to lower your tuition or to significantly discount, so you provide more scholarships or more aid … The problem with that, though, is that you could have [larger universities] come in and basically offer similar scholarships … you’re competing against these universities that have $4 billion endowments.”
“Once you start reducing that tuition down to the point [that] net tuition revenue starts to decrease … you actually start cutting down the money coming in that essentially pays for programs, staff, faculty … if you start discounting too much, that could actually lead to financial concerns for many universities.”
At least 20 higher education institutions closed in 2024, and Research from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia identified a decline in enrollment and an increase in the tuition discount rate among the key variables associated with college closures.
Rather than close, public, non-profit institutions like NKU are more likely to merge with other public universities, according to The Hechinger Report. Recent mergers have been documented in California, Georgia, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania. Public campuses have also closed in states like Ohio and Wisconsin due to mergers.
One of higher education’s advantages in avoiding these worst-case scenarios is leveraging the extent to which institutions can develop their prediction models. NKU is examining current high school performance metrics, as well as test scores from students as young as fifth grade, to study its future customer base.
The university is also already discussing the expected shift in 2039 from the post-COVID birthrate decline.
Padgett said the word most associated with higher education’s enrollment methods would be “traditional.” Modern trends (like the unprecedented nature of the pandemic, the rise of hybrid or online learning, and the sudden growth of AI) necessitate that universities quickly adapt to an increasingly changing landscape.
“I tell my team all the time, this is a strategy for now, because what we’re going to implement to meet the needs right now may change based [on] something that comes down the line two years from now. But, we’ve created a culture within our admissions team now that they are nimble.”
It’s this nimbleness in NKU’s enrollment strategies over the past five years that Padgett credits to NKU’s higher student retention and graduation rates, a decrease in the average time to complete a degree, and repeated recognition for degree value from institutions like the Wall Street Journal.
“Nationally, NKU is so strategically positioned … it feels like a college town, but where we’re located, the tri-state continues to have strong economic growth. We are in a thriving, growing Northern Kentucky region that has strong partnerships already with our two-year universities … I think we’re positioned fairly well to weather some storms, and I think a lot of that has to do with location, strategies, and leadership [with President Short-Thompson].”
