Whittier Plagued With Low Enrollment
Whittier College has been hit with low enrollment following the Fall 2023 semester.
Interim President Kristine Dillon, in an interview with the Quaker Campus, Dillon calls this year’s enrollment “small,” in contrast with the 1,387 of Fall 2021. In a faculty interview last Thursday, Dillon reported first time enrollment is around 200 students, while approximately 800 is the total number of enrollment for the semester. There is no accessible collected data for the ‘23-’24 school year, nor has data on enrollment for Fall 2023 been published.
In Fall 2022, the College reported 477 first-time students, out of 2,408 accepted applicants.
The pandemic, which struck multiple colleges and universities, contributed to a steady decline in student enrollment. Whittier hit peak enrollment in Fall 2019, prior to the COVID-19 shutdown.
California private and liberal arts colleges were hit significantly harder by the pandemic, and resulted in the closure of several SoCal universities, including Marymount California University, a private Catholic institution, which closed in August 2022.
However, these numbers have been dwindling for years.
On a national level, 861 private universities have ceased operations since 2004, with more than 9,000 branch campuses closing their doors effectively. These branch campuses include Whittier Law School, which terminated classes in 2020. But private colleges are not the only colleges suffering the blows. There has been a sharp decline in higher education nationwide with several students citing rising costs and loans as leading factors. And from 2020–2021, public universities have been quickly shutting down, exacerbated by the effects of the pandemic. Now, Whittier may be headed in a similar direction. To garner enrollment, the College has increased its acceptance rate, and is now accepting 82 percent of applicants. This is exponentially higher than local private universities, with Occidental College at a 38.2 percent acceptance rate. Occidental, being a private college, holds an enrollment number of 1,987 as of 2022. As of 2021, the University of La Verne holds a student population of 2,506. But the College is taking steps to secure steady admission.
“All students,” advertises the College, are considered for a John Greenleaf Whittier Scholarship, and eligibility requires 12-unit enrollment and a minimum of a 2.0 G.P.A. According to the College, 85 percent of students are receiving financial aid.
The numbers could be attributed to the Board of Trustees’ decision to cancel several sports programs, including men’s lacrosse, football, and golf last November. The lacrosse team, the only NCAA college men’s lacrosse team in California, was one of few college men’s lacrosse teams on the West Coast.
According to Dillon, about 40 percent of enrolled students are student-athletes, a number that represents a little less than half of the student-body.
Many news publications, such as the Los Angeles Times and Whittier Daily News, have taken the College’s dwindling enrollment rate amidst a string of controversies as a sign of the College permanently shutting down in the near future.
But despite the low enrollment, the College still regards itself as a “Hispanic-serving institution” with Hispanic and Latinx students comprising 49.5 percent of the student population as of 2021.
Enrollment is the main source of revenue for the College, according to Dillon, who intends to apply short-term solutions to this issue, including relying on alumni and donors, as well as implementing fundraising efforts. The school received a grant of $12 million by Mackenzie Scott in 2020, which has been allocated to on-campus resources including the Peer Health Educator Program. Dillon confirmed in a Faculty meeting last Thursday that the College also accepted 2.2 million towards strengthening marketing and developing an Enrollment Team. Faculty will also be included in efforts, as department heads will engage in meetings to address concerns and promote the College at high schools.
Looking towards the future, in collaboration with the Board of Trustees, Dillon will implement a “short-range plan” to “[build] our class enrollment size each year over the next four years, so that we are back at a level that is sustainable for the College.”
The question is what is sustainable at Whittier College. According to Dillon, 1,300 is a healthy enrollment number, and serves as the target for a sustainable college. For now, the College will do what it can to prevent a possible shutdown. As of now, financial efforts serve as a gateway toward avoiding a possible shutdown.
Photo Courtesy of Whittier College
