MORGANTOWN, W.Va. The goal for West Virginia University is clear: lower enrollment and high inflation mean revenue is down and costs have to be cut. However, the road map used to get to the final destination is a bit murky.
On MetroNews “Talkline,” vice president of strategic initiatives Rob Alsop said it’s happening across the country and all institutions of higher learning are resetting their balance sheets.
“While it’s going to be hard, we have the same budgetary pressures that everyone else has,” Alsop said. “So this is our time, as President Gee indicated, to innovate and think about the future.”
Alsop said that nearly two decades ago, people started having fewer children, shrinking the available pool of seniors in recent years and years to come. Add a pandemic, student debt concerns, and questions about the value of a college degree, and the math becomes clear.
Projections show the number of available high school seniors will continue to fall for the next five years.
“It’s a pretty simple equation,” Alsop stated. “If we have fewer students, fewer customers that enter the institution, that means fewer employees, and that means fewer programs.”
In addition to taking the WVU story on the road to primary recruitment areas like New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, that area will be expanded. No matter the area, Alsop said they need to increase enrollment by any amount across the board.
“And there are only 8,000 seniors graduating from those markets in five years, so if we get 20 percent of the market share today, to keep the same number of students if the pool is smaller, we need to get 25 percent of that market,” Alsop said.
If the numbers don’t increase, that’s where the solutions become a little unclear. But we do know that next year the budget cut figure is $35 million, and an increase in enrollment won’t stave off the need for cuts somewhere within the organization.
“If we don’t beat our enrollment targets, it would need to come from expense reduction,” Alsop said. “What part of that is supplies and services and what part of that is salaries from a personnel perspective, we’re still working through, but it will be a combination of both.”
Alsop acknowledged tough decisions are in the future, but maintains university leaders recognized the issue quickly. The quick response gives the institution time to reposition and resize and continue to be a partner to communities and businesses.
“While it’s challenging, it also can be exhilarating to think about how important our institution is, and we need to keep that front and center of what we can continue to mean for the state of West Virginia.”