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October 4, 2009

Catholic Colleges Work to Maintain Access as Their Profiles Rise

By Beckie Supiano

Chicago

Catholic higher education has a long history of providing access and opportunity to disadvantaged and underserved students. But that commitment becomes harder to maintain when a college sees its profile begin to rise. How do Catholic colleges stay true to their mission of access in the face of market realities?

That question provided the framework for a symposium of Catholic college leaders here last week. The meeting, "Balancing Market and Mission: Enrollment Management Strategies in Catholic Higher Education," was sponsored by DePaul University's Center for Access and Attainment. It brought together enrollment management, marketing, and mission officers from about a dozen Catholic colleges for what the organizers believe was the first meeting of its kind.

Enrollment management is sometimes criticized for its focus on the market, said David H. Kalsbeek, senior vice president for enrollment management and marketing at DePaul and one of the meeting's organizers. Yet, he said, enrollment management is one of the only areas on a campus where the tension between market and mission is directly confronted.

The intersection between the two is important, Mr. Kalsbeek said. It is where colleges determine their priorities, decide how to position themselves strategically, and figure out how to meet the challenge of maintaining access. Mission without market "is empty," Mr. Kalsbeek said, and market without mission "is blind." In other words, mission statements are hollow rhetoric if not grounded in a college's realities, while market concerns devoid of mission are rudderless.

Marginalized in the Debate

The issue of access has been on the national stage recently with the release of the book Crossing the Finish Line: Completing College at America's Public Universities (Princeton University Press), by William G. Bowen, Matthew M. Chingos, and Michael S. McPherson. The authors focus on public institutions because "it is essential to recognize that public universities have to be the principal engines of progress in addressing these challenges. Important as it is, the private sector is not large enough, nor does its mission focus as strongly on social mobility as does that of the public sector. It is the public sector that has the historical commitment to educational attainment for all, as well as the scale, the cost-pricing structure, and the greatest extant opportunities to do better (given present graduation rates)."

Mr. Kalsbeek read that passage to highlight that however Catholic colleges might define their missions, they are not seen as major players in the area of access.

Catholic colleges aren't even mentioned in national debates about the topic, a fact that troubled some people at the meeting, and was the main point in the keynote address given by Arnold L. Mitchem, president of the Council for Opportunity in Education. "At present, Catholic colleges and independent colleges in general are playing defensive basketball in the Washington policy arena," he said. It is time, he said, for Catholic colleges to show some leadership.

Generally, colleges want to improve their academic index, graduation rates, percentage of minority students, and percentage of Pell Grant recipients, said Jon Boeckenstedt, associate vice president for enrollment policy and planning at DePaul, who also helped organize the meeting, Yet those goals are in tension with one another.

DePaul has described in its mission statement the kinds of students it wants to be sure to educate: first-generation, low-income, minority, and Chicago residents. Among students enrolled between 2004 and 2008, 53 percent met one of those criteria, but only 4 percent met all four.

Looking at "mission students" in that way can be distasteful to some on a campus, DePaul's enrollment team says. Administrators in mission and ministry or student affairs sometimes think that kind of measurement dehumanizes individual students, Mr. Boeckenstedt said. Yet, the enrollment officials argue, it's just about the only way to see if a college is fulfilling its mission.

Defining Social Justice

Some Catholic colleges measure their catholicity by the number of Catholic students they enroll; others emphasize social justice in the campus experience. There is a debate in Catholic higher education over whether social justice is best expressed through who is in the classroom or through what is taught there. DePaul's enrollment team has come down clearly on the first side. If social justice is a big part of Catholic higher education, Mr. Kalsbeek said, shouldn't it be about educating the less well-off, rather than just teaching the well-off to care about them?

But as the university has become more selective, providing access has become a project that requires deliberation, rather than resulting naturally from the college's weak market position. And, like anything in enrollment management, maintaining that access requires trade-offs.

St. John's University, in New York, has run into a similar situation. As the university has moved from being a commuter college to more of a residential one, it has grown more selective, making it more difficult for lower-income students who are less prepared to get in, even if they have great potential, said Beth M. Evans, vice president for enrollment management. St. John's wants to move up in the rankings, Ms. Evans said, but not at the expense of lower-income, lower-achieving students.

Xavier University of Louisiana, a historically black institution, also has a history of providing access. One of its slogans is "beating the odds," said Dereck J. Rovaris, Sr., special assistant to academic affairs. But even at a college like his, some faculty members want to raise the profile of the student body, he said.

But mission isn't only about who comes to a college, cautioned Jeffrey Carlson, dean of the Rosary College of Arts and Sciences at Dominican University, in Illinois. It is also about the kind of education students receive, and factors like small class sizes and more full-time faculty members matter, too. While the meeting looked at mission from the perspective of enrollment management, he said, it would be beneficial to look at the topic from other vantage points at future meetings.

The meeting's organizers hope that the conversation on marketing and mission can continue in the future, and perhaps include more institutions. In the meantime, several participants said it was refreshing to discuss those issues as colleagues, rather than competitors. "We're not alone," said Fred Heuer, assistant vice president for marketing at Niagara University, in New York. "We're all going through the same kinds of questions and challenges."

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