The State Board of Higher Education met in Philadelphia Thursday as officials try to puzzle out a solution to the enrollment decline driving colleges across Pennsylvania to cut programs or shut their doors.

The board was revamped last year to help private and public colleges navigate a shrinking pool of college-age residents — a decline that’s expected to continue. A strategic plan to respond to the crisis is due by Sept. 1.

Data projections suggest the situation will likely worsen unless the state acts to help colleges adjust, said Kate Shaw, executive director of the State Board of Higher Education.

“Everybody keeps talking about the enrollment cliff. … We are projecting a pretty significant drop in public high school graduates in Pennsylvania by 2037,” Shaw said at the beginning of Thursday’s hearing.

Affordability remains one of the biggest hurdles preventing would-be students from enrolling, Shaw said. Pennsylvania ranks 49th in the country in college affordability. The average college student graduates with $40,000 in debt.

“Those are not great numbers,” she said.

One strategy the board tried but later abandoned was the Near Completer Grant, a program to help students who had dropped out of college re-enroll and finish their degrees. Near Completer was a federally-funded program launched by then-Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration in 2021.

“We were disappointed it was a one-and-done kind of thing,” said Jason Hartz, a dean at the Pennsylvania College of Art & Design in Lancaster.

Hartz said he would like to see the state fund the grant again.

Other university officials said they have had success partnering with employers to craft programs that prepare students for specific jobs upon graduation. Everybody involved would benefit if students were better informed about potential careers and the training needed to pursue them, the officials said.

“​​One of the things that we do a lot is to talk to young people about: Where do they see careers and jobs? As they sit in their homes, they don’t know what a radiologist does. They don’t always know what a nurse practitioner does. They don’t know what a cybersecurity expert actually is,” said Chris Domes, president of Neumann University in Aston.

Enrollment trends

Public and private colleges alike are straining under the demographic pressures.

The Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education in 2022 merged six universities into two regional universities. The system has been struggling with steep declines in enrollment at many campuses. The system’s 16 universities reported a combined enrollment of just over 85,000 students this academic year. A decade ago, enrollment was over 100,000.

Penn State is considering closing 12 of its branch campuses due to similar issues. Enrollment at the branch campuses exceeded 41,000 in 2011. It’s under 30,000 this year.

In addition, four private institutions in Pennsylvania — Cabrini University, Clarks Summit University, Pittsburgh Technical College and The University of the Arts — have closed within the past 12 months.

Adults who attended college but didn’t graduate could be a key market for universities looking to boost enrollment, Shaw said at the hearing.

One million adults in Pennsylvania started college but didn’t graduate.

“That’s a critically important population,” she said.