Enrollment Management and Admissions Policies at Regional Public Universities

The college enrollment landscape has changed vastly in the last couple of decades. As such, regional public universities (RPUs) have had to become increasingly strategic in how they recruit new students to attend their institutions. For example, total college enrollment has declined from 2010 to 2017, and this population continues to become more diverse in race/ethnicity and socioeconomic background. This chapter highlights the strategic enrollment‐related changes that these institutions have undergone across key variables. We close with two case studies, examining these changes across two state systems of higher education to better understand how these variations occur in contexts of broader state demographics and public policies. The findings from this chapter suggest that RPUs have largely experienced similar changes together over the last 10 years of this analysis, showing modest increases in tuition rates and institutional aid amid declining state appropriations and decreases in average first‐year standardized test scores and graduate student enrollment.