In the early 2000s, Robert Witt, then president of the University of Alabama, gave the university's admissions office clear instructions: Treat your best academic candidates the same way you would potential athletic candidates — and look outside the state to find them.
Different sectors of the school have embarked on this mission, according to a 2010 case study of the university approach co-authored by three University of Alabama employees and two other experts in enrollment management, the practice of university chapter formation.
In 2007, athletics gave this strategy a huge boost when the school hired Nick Saban as head football coach.
Saban, who announced his retirement this week, went on to lead Alabama to six national championships. In 2013, Witt, who was then chancellor of the University of Alabama System, called Saban “the best financial investment this university has ever made.” In his final year coaching at the school, Saban earned more than $11 million.
During Saban's tenure at Alabama, enrollment rose from 25,580 to 39,623. His tenure overlapped with Alabama's aggressive efforts to recruit out-of-state students, which began in 2003. The school pioneered the tactic — which public colleges across the country have adopted amid state funding cuts — and which has helped schools raise their academic performance. And increase tuition revenue.
Out-of-state students are more financially valuable to public schools than their in-state counterparts because they pay more tuition. In Alabama, out-of-state undergraduates pay $32,400 annually, compared to $11,100 for in-state students. In a widely shared social media post, Joe Pompliano, who writes a popular newsletter on the economics of sports, wrote: estimated Over the course of Saban's tenure at Alabama, these students generated about $1 billion in additional revenue.
“They have charted a path that many other schools are following. They still lead the pack.“
It's hard to definitively quantify how much of a role Saban played in Alabama's ability to recruit these students, but there's no doubt he helped.
“It was a strategy that was likely to be successful, in my estimation, but when you add a championship football team to it, it increases the likelihood of it being successful,” said Michael Harris, a professor of higher education at Harvard University. Southern Methodist University. Harris began his academic career at Alabama in 2004, a year after the school began that mission.
“You have to think there has been a halo effect on the institution's academic rankings, on its ability to recruit faculty, its ability to recruit students,” he said.
The University of Alabama said in a statement that students are “attracted to the outstanding Alabama experience that drives them to succeed.”
The statement continued: “As the state’s leading public university, the University of Alabama’s priority is to enroll, educate and graduate students residing in Alabama, while also recruiting talented students from across the country.”
Trying to become known as something more than just a football school
When Witt initially launched this strategy, part of the organization's goal was to become known for more than just football. Staff and leadership had an attitude of “relative satisfaction,” relying on the reputation of Alabama’s “athletic and social traditions” to bolster the school’s image, according to the case study.
Witt's strategy included sending recruiters out of state and sharing a different perspective about the school with prospective students.
“Recruiters tell the story of an institution that is more than just a football school or a party school; it speaks of an institution committed to academic success and on its way to becoming a top-tier research institution with a bright present and an even brighter future,” the case study authors wrote.
Through this strategy, Alabama has become a pioneer in a broader trend that has seen leading public universities increasingly target strong out-of-state students. These schools typically pursue these efforts for a combination of three reasons, said Stephen Burd, a senior writer and editor in the Education Policy Program at think tank New America.
They need more tuition revenue amid state funding cuts, want to strengthen their position and become a national brand, and their state's demographics lead to a decline in the number of in-state high school students, he said.
Growth in out-of-state enrollments tends to be concentrated at public research universities located in states where funding is relatively low and that have noteworthy athletic programs, said Ozan Jacquet, an associate professor of higher education at the University of California. , Los Angeles.
“The idea is that you're competing for students who are from wealthy families who can afford non-resident tuition and who may not have made it to the flagship university in their state, and they're basically thinking, 'Do I go to a public regional university? Do I go to a private college or university?' Really expensive?'” Jacquet said.
“Now there's this new option — 'Hey, I can go to this big public leader that I've been watching on TV.' The student section seems to be having a lot of fun.” He added that many students are starting to make this decision.
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It's difficult to separate Saban's success from other efforts to recruit out-of-state students, but Alabama's prowess on the field certainly convinced some of those students to enroll there. Research on the impact of a national championship on enrollment outcomes is mixed, Harris said, but it's not hard to imagine that consistently winning a championship could help make a school an attractive option.
“There's probably not a huge reward for sporadic or one-time excellence” on the football field or basketball court, Jacquet said. “The University of Alabama has been consistently ranked first or in the top three for many years, and they have used that kind of fame and national recognition to drive a really aggressive campaign to manage enrollment, recruiting out-of-state students largely through recruiting interventions and financial aid packages.
However, Harris said that saying football success was the sole driver of Alabama's growth might hurt the broader strategy. “I don't want to belittle anyone else's work on campus to sum it up as: Nick Saban was successful in football.”
Create demand
Alabama State and other leading public institutions essentially create demand for their products by visiting students around the country and talking about themselves, Jacquet said. At Alabama, admissions representatives made 4,349 off-campus recruiting visits in 2017, according to research co-authored by Jacquet. The researchers found that only 392 — or less than 10% — of those visits were in Alabama, and most were in primarily white and affluent communities.
Jacquet and his colleagues found that the 2,312 visits made by recruiters to out-of-state public high schools were also concentrated in affluent white areas. In addition, recruiters visited 934 out-of-state private high schools, more than double the total number of in-state schools they visited.
“They were extreme and extreme,” Jacquet said. “The University of Alabama took recruiting very seriously. They were very purposeful about it. They devoted a lot of resources to it.”
This includes using so-called merit aid, or offering money to students based on something other than the need to convince them to attend. In its 2020 analysis of 339 public colleges, Board found that the University of Alabama spent the most on merit aid.
“In fall 2022, approximately 58% of University of Alabama students are from out of state. “
“The University of Alabama has been the most aggressive in using enrollment management, using non-need-based aid, leveraging financial aid, to attract out-of-state students to come,” he said. “They charted a course that a lot of other schools are following. They continue to lead the pack.”
Schools generally use non-need-based aid to recruit students in two ways. The first is to offer generous scholarships, including full trips, to outstanding students. This can raise the academic standard of the school, and also creates ambassadors of sorts for the school in other areas of the country who may encourage more students to apply.
Another strategy is to use merit aid to provide a discount on the full price of tuition, which attracts relatively wealthy students who will still pay more than a student with greater financial need.
“It's much cheaper than using your financial aid to try to meet financial needs,” Burd said.
For Alabama, this strategy appears to have worked. Not only did enrollment grow massively, but the number of out-of-state students increased over the course of the campaign, according to Jackett's research. In the fall 2022 semester, approximately 58% of the school's students were from out of state.
However, critics of strict enrollment management at public colleges say it can turn schools meant to serve the state's population into institutions that serve wealthy, largely white students from elsewhere. James Angell, who served as president of the University of Michigan in the late 19th century, said public colleges provided “an extraordinary education for the common man.”
Jacquet's research found that between the 2010 and 2016 school years, the percentage of freshmen receiving Pell grants, money the government provides for low-income students to attend college, declined, and the percentage of black students also declined.
“Not every student in another state is richer or whiter; [but] “These are students in other states that universities are explicitly recruiting,” he said. “When you recruit and enroll students, it changes the racial makeup and income composition of the school.”
The University of Alabama has previously said that Jacquet's research on college visits focuses narrowly on one element of a school's approach to recruiting.
In its statement to MarketWatch, the university said it is “committed to providing an accessible and affordable path to a premier educational experience in our state,” noting it has frozen tuition for in-state residents in six of the past seven years.
Out-of-state tuition has increased “marginally” to account for inflation over the past two years, after three years of remaining flat, she said.
“In addition, UA scholarships have opened the door to thousands of students over the years, both in-state and out-of-state, who would not have been able to attend without scholarship support,” the statement said.
In a September press release about the school's record enrollment, the university highlighted a 6.6% increase in the number of in-state first-time undergraduates.
But the fact that the school's efforts to grow enrollment and brand have been clearly successful so far does not mean that it is guaranteed to continue doing so in the future.
“The thing about recruiting is if you have a great recruiting class one year, great, you can take a breath for a month, but you have to do it the next year, and the next year, and the next year,” Jacquet said. . “This really strong demand for out-of-state enrollment, it's not a given. There's a lot of pressure on the next coach.”
To replace Saban at the helm of its marquee athletic program, Alabama was able to lure Kalen DeBoer, who had just led the University of Washington to a berth in the national championship game on Jan. 8, falling to the University of Michigan. Which on New Year's Day led to the Crimson Tide eliminating Saban.
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