Graphs - Strategic Plan

Recent graduates of Ohio independent colleges are likely still to be in Ohio; each class's share of those remaining here after graduation is not only higher than that of all alumni/alumnae, but is at least as high as the share of Ohio residents in each class at enrollment.

Ohio State’s major effort to “enhance the quality of its undergraduate student population”* — using millions of dollars in merit aid and recruitment expenditures to raise the ACT scores of entering freshmen — props up the sector-wide rate of on-time bachelor’s degree completions at Ohio’s public universities. Even so, Ohio State and the public sector lag behind the independent sector in this important success measure.

* “Ohio State 2008: Bridging the Excellence Divide,” by the OSU Enrollment Management Committee

Ohio independent colleges' commitment to adult students has grown substantially in the last two decades.

Ohio's independent colleges and universities also do more than their share in meeting another state strategic higher education goal: educating adults seeking bachelor's degrees.

Ohio's independent colleges do more than their share of meeting one of the state's strategic higher education goals: attracting students from out of state.

A major new study of graduations at public colleges and universities — including Ohio’s — offers further evidence of targeting student aid rather than tuition level in helping needy students complete their degrees. While net cost of attendance has no measurable effect in the graduation rates of well-off students seeking bachelor’s degrees in the public sector, it has a major, statistically significant effect on those with the least ability to pay and the greatest need for financial aid.

Lifting the tuition freeze appears not to have damaged Ohio’s public-sector enrollments for now, but the full effect will not become evident until announced tuition increases become effective in the winter or spring. The lion’s share of the fall increase was at the two-year campuses — community college headcount jumped by nearly 17% and branch campus headcount by more than 11% over fall 2008.

Large majorities of entering freshmen at both public and independent colleges are from Ohio, but independent-college students have a better chance of learning with someone from another part of the country.

In the last two years, the enrollment growth the state needs to meet the governor's strategic higher education goals has been concentrated, by policy and by the numbers, in the state's public campuses.

Enrollment last fall at the public University System of Ohio campuses increased by about 11,000 students — not even half of the growth required to reach the governor’s goal of 230,000 more students by 2016.