Students have a lot of factors to consider when they’re thinking about where they want to go to college — among them the cost, what programs a school offers and if they want a big school or a small one.
But new data suggest that increasingly, prospective students are also thinking about where colleges and universities are located — and what the laws around issues like abortion access and guns are in those states.
Liam Knox has written about this. He’s the admissions and enrollment reporter for Inside Higher Ed. The Show spoke about what he found about where political considerations rank in a student’s deciding where to go to college, relative to factors like cost.
Full conversation
LIAM KNOX: It’s a great question, because they're more and more a part of that decision making process, they hold nowhere near the weight of something like cost or program consideration, academic quality and reputation, things like that are going to be far and above the most important factors in students decision making process.
But as higher ed is increasingly a focal point of political conversations, both at the state and the national level. These political issues are bleeding into college students thinking around where they want to go to college. But it's not just the political considerations either. The most important policy issues for college students are also practical issues. They're safety issues. They're namely gun control laws and reproductive rights laws.
Students are much more likely to want to go to a college in a state that has lenient abortion laws, that has much less reproductive rights restrictions, and that has much stricter gun control laws. That's been the case for a while now, but as you know, school shootings happen more and more regularly, and after the 2022, Supreme Court decision striking down Roe v Wade, it's more important for students in that demographic than ever, and so has become an enrollment problem for colleges and states with with policies that don't align with students priorities as well as obviously a political problem.
MARK BRODIE: Are we seeing enrollment numbers reflect that like are we seeing, for example, colleges and states that have more restrictive abortion laws and less restrictive gun laws, losing students to states that have less restrictive abortion laws and more restrictive gun laws to some extent?
KNOX: Yes, it's already happened in some obvious areas. You know, medical programs for students who are specifically training to be things like OBGYNs, those enrollments have fallen in states where literally, they can't access the kind of practical clinical training they might be able to in states with less restrictive laws. But it's only just starting. We're only just starting to see the real enrollment effects of these political considerations in college choice.
More than anything, it's a kind of future consideration as colleges grapple with ongoing enrollment problems try to compete in an increasingly cutthroat sector for a diminishing demographic, the traditional 18-year-old high school student. These policy issues are going to become enrollment issues as well, but in states where, for instance, they're slashing resources for LGBTQ students and students of color, where DEI funding is going way down, states like Texas and increasingly, plenty of other states where this is having a major impact on education policy at the state level.
These kinds of battles have been playing out in purple states as well. Wisconsin had a huge budget battle over DEI over the past year, students who would benefit from those resources, who might need them to feel like they belong on campus, are feeling, you know, there's a risk that colleges in those states, through no fault of their own, are going to start losing those students, and that's obviously more of a concern than ever after the Supreme Court's decision striking down affirmative action last year.
BRODIE: When you look at some of the issues more related to what goes on inside the classroom, things like, you know, whether there are particular programs dealing with, you know, minority populations or DEI programs, things like that, things, I guess, basically that like the state Legislature or state Board of Regents can control, is there a differential happening between public colleges and universities and private ones in a given state?
Sort of taking the, you know, the state policies on gun laws and abortion access out of it, but specifically what goes on in the classroom? Is it possible that there could be different enrollment numbers for private versus public schools based on some of the stuff that goes on or can't go on inside a classroom?
KNOX: Yes and no. And the reason that's complicated is because, on the one hand, you're right that private colleges do have control over their campus policies in a way that a lot of public colleges don't. There are some exceptions to that, but for the most part, for these bigger issues. Like you're saying, divisive concepts, laws being passed at the state Legislature, boards of regents, defunding DEI at public colleges. That is something that private colleges can use to draw a distinction and attract those students that may be turned off from those public institutions that are beholden to state laws in ways that the privates are not. You're seeing this at plenty of private colleges.
It is also true, though, that a lot of the students who are most impacted by these political considerations are lower income students, often students of color, are the ones who have the least amount of choice in that regard, who will would be less likely to afford a private higher education, and who would be less likely to be able to leave their state if they're in a red state.
BRODIE: I'm wondering if schools are talking about this when they're trying to recruit students or just sort of in their promotional materials. Either, you know, if they're trying to appeal to students who you know, the majority of students, according to Gallup, who want less restrictive abortion laws and more restrictive gun laws like our state, our schools in states that have those touting them. And conversely, you know, for students who might be more interested in the reverse of that, is that something that schools in those states are talking about?
KNOX: Yeah, I think if they aren't now, then they are likely going to be soon. All of this data that's just coming out on what matters to students is data that colleges can use to recruit, if it's a college in a blue state that's maybe in a kind of an oasis regionally, like, say, Illinois, you know, surrounded by states with with with more conservative policies on some of these issues that matter to students, I think we're definitely going to start seeing it be used as a recruitment tool. I think that it's also kind of a fraught and hairy issue where a lot of colleges, for good reason, don't want to get any more entangled in politics, whether it's at a national or state level, than they already are.
BRODIE: Well, I would imagine there's also potentially at least a financial consideration here, too, right? Like we know, for example, especially for public colleges and universities, that their out-of-state tuition dollars are greater than their in-state tuition dollars, in many cases, anyway.
So I wonder if you know the ability to you mentioned a place like Illinois, if that might be a financial benefit for them, if, for example, their students from, you know, Iowa and Indiana and other sort of Midwestern states around them that have more restrictive abortion policies and less restrictive gun laws, that could be a financial boon to public colleges and universities in Illinois, if they're getting more out of state students paying higher tuition.
KNOX: It absolutely could be, and the inverse is true as well. The University of Alabama, for instance, has one of the highest proportions of out-of-state students of any public college in the country, will the rise of the political consideration in students college decision making mean that number is going to start going down, which, of course, means that the money is going to start that, at least tuition revenue is going to start retreating as well. I think it's possible, and in states where they can use this as a positive recruitment tool, I think there's going to be more money invested at those public colleges in trying to get out of state students through that pathway.
