As Enrollment Lags, Colleges Send Acceptances to Students Who Haven’t Applied

Research reveals that direct admission seems to be significantly efficient at boosting enrollment for non-selective establishments, suggesting SUNY’s plan for group schools could also be well-targeted.

However, specialists say, whereas direct admission has confirmed useful for school entry, that’s solely one of many boundaries college students face to truly enrolling in larger schooling.

Making College the Default

While SUNY has known as its plan “automatic admission,” it’s extra so a “direct admission” plan, in accordance to Taylor Odle, assistant professor of academic coverage research on the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who has studied these plans in a number of states.

Automatic, generally known as “guaranteed,” admission packages set a threshold for admission — for instance, a requirement {that a} scholar have a sure GPA. But direct admission packages set that threshold after which take extra steps by proactively speaking it to college students, sometimes together with personalised details about their school choices and what they want to do to declare their place on campus.

Direct admission is just not about decreasing the bar for admittance at group schools, stated Tom Brock, director of the Community College Research Center, which conducts analysis to strengthen alternatives and outcomes for college students. Rather, it’s a technique of elevating consciousness of faculty choices and simplifying the admissions course of.

Most group schools are open entry establishments, that means virtually anybody who applies is admitted. But potential school college students, particularly those that will be the first of their households to attend school, typically don’t distinguish between open entry and selective establishments when contemplating whether or not to apply to school, Brock stated.

Much like with retirement packages, the place people who require workers to opt out fairly than choose in yield larger participation charges, Brock sees direct admission as switching the default. Now, highschool graduates in New York can have to actively flip down pursuing school.

Ben Castleman, affiliate professor of public coverage and schooling on the University of Virginia, sees direct admission as a default shift, too, but in addition in a psychological sense. Regardless of whether or not the coed thinks it, schools are telling them they’re school materials.

“Sometimes very small changes to the decision-making environment that lead students to change how they think about colleges as an option, whether they could get in, whether they belong, or just learning more about colleges, can result in bigger downstream changes in behavior than would be expected given the actual size of the decision change,” Castleman stated.

Outcomes of Direct Admission Experiments

Idaho was the primary state to undertake a statewide direct admission system in 2015, after the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems found it had the bottom college-going fee of all states in 2010. Since the admissions change, each highschool scholar in Idaho on observe to graduate has been robotically admitted to a set of public larger schooling establishments, with no software or charges hooked up.

As a outcome, first-time enrollments rose 4 to 8 % per campus, or 50 to 100 college students per campus on common, according to a research carried out by Odle and Jennifer Delaney, an affiliate professor of upper schooling on the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Now, there may be nationwide knowledge out there from the Common Application’s direct admission pilot, which discovered college students supplied direct admission had been considerably extra doubtless to take preliminary steps to enroll in school in contrast to those that weren’t.

In one of many largest randomized managed trials within the larger schooling literature to date, additionally carried out by Odle and Delaney, almost 32,000 college students had been randomly assigned to both obtain a direct admission provide with an software payment waiver or no contact through the 2021-22 software cycle. Six four-year private and non-private establishments of varied sizes (Montclair State University, University of Maryland Eastern Shore, Middle Tennessee State University, Fisk University, Marymount University and George Mason University) agreed to take part on this research, which used data college students submitted when making a Common App account to decide who certified for direct admission.

If college students met the residency requirement and GPA threshold set by a given establishment, Common App notified them in January 2022 of their assured spot and directed them to use a code that gave them entry to a simplified admission kind, related to SUNY’s direct admission course of.

The virtually 18,000 straight admitted college students had been almost twice as doubtless to “apply” (submit the simplified software) to the establishment the place they had been supplied direct admission. They had been additionally 12 % extra doubtless to submit any school software, suggesting direct admission opens up the college-going pathway extra usually.

Direct admission impacted a few of these college students greater than others. Racial minorities, first-generation college students and low-income college students had been much more doubtless to “apply” when offered a proposal of direct admission.

For instance, George Mason University, a big public four-year establishment in Virginia, noticed candidates from new areas when it supplied direct admission, stated dean of admissions Alan Byrd.

“A lot of our students from the state of Virginia particularly come from Northern Virginia and the Richmond area,” Byrd stated, “but we were excited to see applications from rural areas of Virginia, where we don’t have the same presence.”

These newest outcomes are half two of a bigger, multiyear pilot program from Common App. During its first 12 months, in March 2021, a smaller pattern dimension of scholars had been straight admitted to three traditionally Black schools and universities. This first 12 months noticed college students 4 instances extra doubtless to “apply” after receiving a letter of direct admission.

The third 12 months of the pilot, when about 33,000 college students had been straight admitted to 13 establishments within the 2022-23 software cycle, discovered that straight admitted college students had been 2.3 instances extra doubtless to “apply.”

While these increased “application” rates hold across the multiple years of the study, Odle and Delaney assessed enrollment outcomes for the first time using the 2021-22 data and National Student Clearinghouse records. (It is too early to assess impacts on enrollment for the third year, as these students would be enrolling for this upcoming fall.)

The researchers found that, while students were responsive to direct admission offers, the increase in signaled intent to enroll did not translate to actual enrollment gains. Essentially, there were no enrollment gains from direct admission, although this is based on an already high baseline for enrollment among Common App users. The students in the sample still enrolled in college overall (84 percent), just not necessarily in the institutions that offered them direct admission as a result of that effort.

In Idaho, while enrollment increased overall due to direct admission efforts, these gains were almost entirely concentrated at two-year, open access institutions, where all students were proactively admitted, compared to at four-year institutions, where students needed to meet a higher threshold for admittance based on grade-point average and standardized test scores.

These combined results suggest that two-year, open access institutions, like New York’s community colleges, are best primed to achieve increased enrollment results from direct admission.

“Direct admissions is a policy targeted at getting students on the college-going pathway,” Odle said, as opposed to supporting those students who are already likely to enroll in higher ed.

Direct admission in Idaho had essentially no impact on the enrollment of low-income students (and did not yield data to assess impact based on student race or first-generation status). This was not necessarily surprising, Odle said, because the college-going population will start to mirror the general population when everyone is admitted, as was the case in Idaho.

However, Odle qualified, “This is likely also because direct admissions only targets one barrier to enrollment — searching, applying, administrative tasks, etc. — but many more stand in the way to matriculation.”

States across the country have experimented with direct admission, including Minnesota, Hawaii, Washington, and South Dakota (although this last program is no longer in operation after being discontinued during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the state suspended administering the assessment it used as its admission threshold). Some states have taken preliminary curiosity — together with Illinois, which handed a associated invoice however has not but applied it — or will start efforts on an identical timeline to SUNY — together with Connecticut, Georgia and Wisconsin starting this fall.

While states like Texas and California have plans that admit students whose academic performance puts them in a top percentage of their graduating class to a set of selective public higher ed institutions, Odle argues those are not direct admission because they still require students to know their ranking and apply.

“It’s useless for there to be an automatic or guaranteed threshold if students and families don’t know about it or don’t know what they’re supposed to do to enroll,” Odle said, “even if they’re ‘guaranteed’ a spot.”

Boosting Community College Access

The SUNY initiative is New York’s first statewide attempt at direct admission. It was launched as part of the governor’s 2023 State of the State agenda.

Direct admission is now available for 29 SUNY colleges — all of its community colleges aside from the Fashion Institute of Technology, because FIT is highly selective, said Holly Liapis, SUNY press secretary.

These direct admissions exclude students who live in New York City.

“The direct admissions program matched students by their home ZIP code to the closest local community college,” Liapis said. “SUNY campuses have the largest geographic service areas outside of the city, which is why NYC was not included in this pilot year.”

In a separate but parallel initiative, the City University of New York has partnered with New York City Public Schools to send personalized letters this fall to the approximately 65,000 seniors expected to graduate from city high schools during the 2023-24 school year. CUNY’s effort stops short of direct admission, but its partnership with NYCPS is intended to make sure students who apply have college and career advising within their high school, a CUNY spokesperson said.

Although distinct, the efforts share a similar goal: to make sure every high school graduate in New York knows there is a place for them in the state’s colleges.

Many New York community colleges were already doing local outreach to encourage enrollment, and a few began direct admission last school year through partnerships with their local high schools ahead of SUNY’s announcement, including Westchester Community College just north of New York City and Columbia-Greene Community College farther north up the Hudson River.

Westchester and Columbia-Greene are seeing higher applicant numbers compared to this time of year historically. Christopher Westby, Westchester’s registrar, and Matthew Green, dean of enrollment management at Columbia-Greene, attribute this to having targeted students in the fall through their individual partnerships, as opposed to SUNY’s June letter campaign.

SUNY’s outreach to students at the end of the school year, as opposed to earlier in the college application process, is a concern among some community college leaders and researchers because many students have already settled on post-graduation plans by then.

Liapis, SUNY’s press secretary, said that while SUNY recruits students to enroll at all times of year through college fairs and waiving application fees for certain timeframes, “having the mailing in June as students are graduating is another opportunity to remind students who have not already accepted admission at a four-year college that there is a spot at our community colleges.” SUNY will evaluate the timing after the pilot year, she said, as well as conduct a year-end review by consulting with campuses to review enrollment data.

Westby and Green cautioned that direct admission efforts may have expedited the typical spike in applications in August, meaning enrollment could level out come the fall. Some other colleges, including Nassau Community College on Long Island, have also seen enrollment trend upward for the fall, although the reasons for this are likely multiple. For others, such as Suffolk County Community College on Long Island, Clinton Community College in Plattsburgh and Herkimer County Community College in the Mohawk Valley region, new student enrollment remains flat.

Even so, community college leaders still see a benefit to having students admitted earlier than usual. It allows for advising to start earlier, including explaining financial aid options and planning academic and intended career paths. Early consultations with any institution may be a useful way to help students find a good college option even if the college giving the advice is not the right fit.

“We want to be that local resource for these students,” Green said, “whether or not they enroll with us.”

More Than Admission Is Required

Cost has consistently been cited as the top reason for not enrolling in college, and researchers have found automatic and direct admission programs to be most effective when paired with supports to help students overcome other barriers to college access, such as financial aid.

SUNY’s direct admission letters mentioned financial aid and New York-specific assistance and scholarships. CUNY similarly plans to include financial aid information in its personalized letters to students. While financial assistance programs can cover most, if not all, expenses related to community college, if students do not know what aid is available to them or how to complete the paperwork necessary to receive it, the barrier remains.

Nudging can help. Castleman from the University of Virginia found that text reminders about application status and assistance improved completion of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid and college matriculation. On average, early FAFSA filers are awarded more financial aid, so early filing may be a mechanism for improved college access, too.

However, he said, “I’m pretty persuaded that our most effective interventions are not ones that stop at text message reminders or even technology-based advising, but ones that try to foster sustained, in-person advising and support.”

One example is Bottom Line, a college advising program that operates in New York and other states to provide individualized advising to students before their senior year. In a randomized trial, students offered Bottom Line support were 23 percent more likely to earn a bachelor’s degree within four years after high school relative to the control group that was not offered Bottom Line guidance.

If direct admission is not accompanied by other advising supports, there is also concern about “undermatching,” which is when a student’s academic credentials would allow them access to a more selective higher education institution than the one they actually choose, said Joshua Wyner, founder and executive director of the Aspen Institute’s College Excellence Program.

Many students are reluctant about their abilities. In a 2023 report from the education consulting firm EAB, 26 percent of more than 20,000 high schoolers answered that fears about “whether I’ll be successful in college” were a top reason to not enroll. Research shows that undermatching is most likely to be the case for students from low-income families and those whose parents do not have a college degree.

Given this risk, Odle and other higher education researchers see a need to expand SUNY’s direct admission to four-year colleges in order to improve bachelor’s degree attainment.

SUNY currently offers guaranteed admission for transfers if a student graduates from a SUNY or CUNY two-year college with an associate degree, but students must still go through the application process — it is not a direct admission. And some SUNY campuses have joint admissions. For example, the Binghamton Advantage Program permits college students taking lessons at SUNY Broome Community College to reside on the Binghamton University campus with a possibility to switch to Binghamton after one or two years.

Odle and others have but to assess commencement charges or bachelor’s diploma attainment following direct admission. It can be unknown whether or not pursuing school has left collaborating college students with debt they in any other case could not have had, Odle added, particularly on condition that two-year schools have the bottom completion charges out of upper schooling establishments and fewer sources to help college students all through school.

The candy spot, so to communicate, of direct admission stays debatable.

“If you only give direct admissions to students with a 3.7 GPA, you’re not going to do anything, because they’re already going into college,” Odle defined. “But if it’s too low, also, you may not do anything, because maybe students aren’t going to go to college regardless of simplifying [processes] and getting financial aid.”

However, he added, regardless of these limitations, “the case is closed now” that proactive outreach, a simplified admission kind and payment waivers work in getting college students previous the appliance barrier.

The subsequent model of direct admission — what Odle calls “direct admission 2.0” — wants to get college students over enrollment hurdles and past.