A Hilo lawmaker wants the University of Hawaii at Hilo to beef up its new enrollment growth plan by adding more specifics and raising the targeted student goal.
State Sen. Kai Kahele, D-Hilo, who chairs the Senate’s higher education committee, said the campus’ five-year enrollment management plan is “disappointing.”
The plan was presented last month to the Board of Regents. The board requested enrollment management plans from all other campuses in the UH system, most of which have experienced declining student populations in recent years.
UH-Hilo’s enrollment also has dropped — every year since 2012, when it peaked at 4,157 students after eight years of growth. The plan aims to reverse that decline by setting a 3,830-student target by the 2020-21 school year.
According to the plan, about 3,620 students are predicted to enroll this fall — a 1.2 percent drop from the previous year. Student growth would begin in fall 2018, under the plan, and continue to increase incrementally each year.
Kahele believes that roughly 300-student increase enrollment goal, however, should be set higher because it only attempts to mitigate the overall net loss by “less than half.”
“We’re not even going to get back to our goal from five or six years ago, and that’s unacceptable to me,” Kahele said last week. “ … I give the university credit for providing the numbers they provided, because I’m also of the mindset I don’t want to set my expectations too high. But at the same time, I think we need to be more aggressive. When I saw (the plan), I was just disappointed.”
The plan lists several “enrollment management strategies” which include: recruiting first-time Big Island students, recruiting transfer students, improving retention, and developing new sources of students, among other things.
But Kahele said he believes the plan could still include more concrete recruitment initiatives, particularly an “executable” strategy to attract local students.
About 35 percent of Hawaii’s college-bound students last year enrolled at in-state public colleges, which is down slightly from the year prior.
Arizona State University, for example, offers a campus tour/brown-bag lunch program for low-income sixth-graders designed to expose them to the college early, Kahele said.
“I don’t think we’re doing enough to market the university,” Kahele said. “And I don’t think we’re doing enough to promote student life and recruit students to come to UH-Hilo.
“I think we need to do more than what we’re doing now and it’s pretty telling when only 55 percent of (Hawaii) graduates (overall) decided to attend a four-year college anywhere (last year) and only 35 percent decided to stay in Hawaii. What are we going to do to recruit right across the street from Waiakea and in our own backyard?”
UH-Hilo Chancellor Don Straney did not return a request for comment last week, but he previously said he also would have preferred a larger goal, “but this is one I think we can achieve.”
And Dan Meisenzahl, systemwide UH spokesman, told the Tribune-Herald on Thursday the enrollment goal is meant as a “benchmark” and “doesn’t mean we’ll stop once we hit 300.”
Meisenzahl also said the goal was determined using a formula which takes into account enrollment across the entire UH system. Systemwide, UH is targeting for 63,636 students to be enrolled by the 2020-21 school year, up from the 53,418 enrolled this past fall.
“The goal internally at UH-Hilo is much more than 300,” Meisenzahl said. “We absolutely want more.”
Meisenzahl also claimed UH-Hilo has, in fact, ramped up its recruitment efforts in recent years. He said UH-Hilo has visited “every Hawaii Island high school” for on-site registration and workshops, and more than 1,000 isle students have visited campus since last September.
UH-Hilo also recently launched statewide television and radio campaigns, Meisenzahl said, and has “significantly increased” its social media presence. He said UH-Hilo also re-branded its recruitment materials in recent years, which university officials hope will give incoming students a better idea of what to expect. It also now communicates with prospective students via texting, Meisenzahl said.
“As far as what we’re doing, I got to tell you, no one has been as aggressive as UH-Hilo as far as a commitment to recruiting,” Meisenzahl said.
College enrollment has dropped nationally. In spring 2016, overall post-secondary enrollment declined 1.3 percent from the year prior, following a 1.9 percent drop in 2015, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. The largest declines were among four-year, for-profit schools, and two-year public colleges.
Enrollment at four-year public colleges, however, increased by a fraction last year. The Research Center’s data shows 0.6 percent more students enrolled at four-year public schools in spring 2016 than the previous year, following a 0.1 percent increase in 2015.
UH-Hilo’s enrollment management plan can be found at: tinyurl.com/UHHenrollmentplan.
Email Kirsten Johnson at kjohnson@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
