Note: This Blog has been updated on February 10, 2016!

Making a change is hard, and not everyone will embrace the call for a change easily. The Association has predicted accurately that this sort of changes will cause tensions as it has been shown recently in one of the US campuses. There will always be two sides of the story. But, strategic decisions have to be made based on past and present data as well as possible regulator’s policy changes in the future. Colleges have to use different yard sticks, than what and how they have been applied in the past when admitting college applicants. There will always be a conflict between the Admissions and Recruitment Office (who wants to bring as many students to campus as possible. Perhaps, including under-prepared students) and the Student Success Office (who wants to retain as many students as possible).  Lower student retention rates will surely affect negatively the institution’s score card (and lower operational budget, as a result).  The article said that the University President has to make a decision to cut the students off who may not be able to make it. Had the institution applies the IRI paradigm in the admissions process, we are very sure this unnecessary tension could ever happen.  IRI will help the decision makers to identify high risk students prior admitting them.  Unfortunate the process of identifying them was done after their got admitted and enrolled.

Many colleges are experiencing financial challenges because of decreasing student enrollment. The Association has completed and shared the studies based on real data on such possible future trends. The results of these studies have pointed out increasing pressures for many colleges to deal with their enrollment numbers. Especially for Liberal Arts Colleges and other “private institutions” to be able to attract enough students. We have learned that several colleges plan to lower their tuition as reported in the media. If the elasticity of demand for their services is greater than one, then lowering the tuition may lead to enrollment increases. Otherwise, it is just a wishful strategy.  In other words, lowering tuition will not always guarantee for enrollment to increase.

Today we learn a University President quit her job due to budget cuts.  The Association has presented its research findings on potential college closures years ago.  Therefore, this news was not a surprise, but to confirm the research results.  Gotta to believe what the research results (1475 pages pdf file) show and take appropriate action before it’s too late.

The recent ruling on student loans malpractices pursued by for-profit colleges show that the country needs a better policy on the student loans program. The Association has pointed out the potential cracks in the whole system. It has urged the administration to established ESCC. Though the academic accountability started to take its shape recently, it seems that there is a lot of homework to be done to cope with financial accountability. Otherwise, the tax payers again have to bail out the cost of the mistakes.

There is an article recently published which discussed the future prospects of business model for-profit colleges. According to the article, things do not look good. In November 2012, we have published and presented a manuscript based on static equilibrium analyses which show the probability of future US colleges’ survival by applying NCES published data. The results show a pretty clear picture on what will happen to the industry. Since then many articles were published which seem to firmly confirm what the Association has previously found.

Often students are sandwiched between two parties interests which have caused tremendous negative impacts on their future income. College high operational cost due to inefficiency has caused a skyrocketed college tuition. After graduation, they, the graduates have to deal with another pressure from the student loans servicing or collection agencies which often operate with maximizing profit mindset—that will apply all possible means to achieve their profit objective. Things are getting worse when the DOE has a minimum way, or no way to control the loan servicing companies’ behavior until the public outcry which then caused the CFPB to step in. The CFPB finally has made recommendations to reform the industry.  This clearly suggests and confirms that the US higher education is broken as has been stated by the Association in the past.  The recent reform recommendations also prove otherwise the claims of no problem with US student loans which only represent special interest groups that defy the reality and the majority of American Public’s interests.  One additional note to the CFPB to also pay attention on the DOE, Accounting Dept or Unit (Atlanta, GA branch as an example) that is responsible to make collection not to charge borrowers’ bank account without their consent.  Often, this unit charges customers’ bank account twice in a certain month without their permission.  This creates problem with bank overdrafts which then make the bank to charge incredible amount of multiple overdraft fees, starting when the account  become red.

Recently US DOE published a report how federal data can be used to improve the performance of US institutions of Higher Education. Finally the regulator takes a baby step in protecting consumers that have limited resources. This is certainly an important progress that the regulator has made to keep college accountability in check. However, it is still a long way to solve the acute student loans issues in the country.

In the past several weeks we have heard how the student loans become a hot topic in the US Presidential race. Winning the college students’ votes could be a crucial point to win the seat. Therefore, promises such as loans forgiveness or free college education were repeatedly mentioned. Sadly, none of these solutions addresses the real reasons behind the student loans problem in the country. So what are the real reasons? Click here to find the answers.

In the wake of weaker student enrollment, US colleges are struggling to fill their seats that is enough to generate revenue to balance their planned annual spending.  The interests are growing to forecast what students enrollment might be which never happened in the past.  Is it possible to forecast student enrollment?  Our short answer is yes, you can!  The next question is how accurate your prediction or forecasting will be.  In the world of econometrics and forecasting, there are two ways to predict any sort of predictions.  (1). Applying time series analyses and (2). Using some sort of econometric models.  There is also effort to combine these two approaches to come up with the lowest Mean Square Error (MSE).  Forecasting of student enrollment was rarely done in the past in decision making process.  The reason is simple.  In the past higher institutions do not need to do it due to strong demand for college education.  However, the condition has changed since then.  Rather than paying a lot of money to pay a consultant firm, an institution can just take the naive model i.e., take the average of enrollment over the period of analyses and available data.  This might be your best predictor for your (t+1) period of student enrollment.  Do not forget to consider the margin of error in your final judgment.  The more data one has, the closer the sample mean to its population average.  At least 30 observations are needed to satisfy the Central Limit Theorem.