How Utah’s higher education landscape can evolve to meet a future of fewer students

The nation’s population of college-age people is expected to start declining in 2025.

On the other hand, Utah's college-age population will likely start dropping later, in 2032 and decline for over a decade before rebounding.

However, a new report from the University of Utah Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute said that if the state's current approaches remain unchanged, this demographic dip will impact enrollment and revenues at Utah's eight public colleges and universities, as well as eight technical colleges.

"Utah can maximize the opportunities and minimize the challenges created by the change in college-age population by planning and acting now," Andrea Brandley, senior education analyst at the Gardner Institute, said in a statement. "State and institutional policymakers can proactively adopt strategies to transform, conserve and realign to strategically position Utah higher education."

Population decline

Over the last 17 years, Utah has seen growth in its college-age population, but the looming decrease is likely to impact enrollment trends.

Right now, many of Utah's higher education institutions are experiencing enrollment growth, growing from 219,219 students in 2012 to 237,257 students in 2023, according to the report.

Additionally, college-age students account for just over half of enrolled Utah System of Higher Education students, with traditional college students composing a larger share of the student population at the state's research universities and a smaller share at technical colleges.

But factors like declining college participation rates and labor force dynamics are impacting enrollment, with colleges and universities competing with the labor force for potential students.

"When the economy is strong, lower unemployment rates and higher wages attract workers and the opportunity cost of attending school increases. As a result, potential students may choose to engage in the workforce in lieu of pursuing a college education," said the report.

Responding to demographic changes

"As these college-age population declines approach, Utah will be advantaged if government and educational leaders consider the fiscal and economic implications of a declining pool of traditional college-age students," said the report. "Utah can strategically position higher education for the future by adopting a range of strategies to transform, conserve and realign."

The report expounds on "transform, conserve and realign."

Transformation strategies include embracing a systemwide, mission-based focus that will aim to "aggressively improving student retention and completion, increasing high school graduate and older student enrollment rates and attracting the best and brightest researchers, faculty and students from ailing national institutions to leapfrog others amid national contraction."

Related to the looming college-age population decline or not, Utah is certainly taking strides to get more students to attend higher education.

Earlier this month, the Utah System of Higher Education launched "Admit Utah," a program allowing every high school student in the state guaranteed admission to at least one of 16 public higher education institutions, regardless of GPA.

With fewer students also comes less revenue for higher education. The report said Utah's educational and political leaders can address this by employing conservation strategies that include creating budget buffers to manage the limited or declining enrollment growth.

This could look like limiting new hires as enrollment stagnates and maximizing the use of existing facilities as opposed to building new ones.

And finally, the report pointed to realignment strategies in cases where conservation and transformation strategies are unsuccessful.

These strategies include rearranging cost structures to align with any enrollment declines by downsizing and even closing struggling programs, reducing facility footprints when feasible and reducing staff through natural attrition or other means, according to the report.

"As state and higher education policymakers look to Utah's future, pending demographic shifts provide an opportunity to reevaluate existing service delivery approaches to ensure they evolve to meet Utahns' critical needs," Gardner Institute chief economist Phil Dean said in a statement. "A robust and market-aligned higher education system that innovates and prepares our future workforce remains a critical driver of Utah's future economic prosperity."

The full report can be found here.