Graphs - Strategic Plan

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.