The University of Maine System is bucking national trends with its highest enrollment since 2021 — part of a concerted effort to prepare for a looming enrollment cliff.
The system had a fall enrollment of 25,870 as of Oct. 15, it announced on Oct. 23, its highest since 2021 when the system had 26,111 students enrolled. Enrollment across the UMaine System has grown by nearly 5% since 2022, outpacing the national average of 3.4% over the same period.
Seven of the eight campuses in the system have seen little or no change to enrollment since 2022, but UMaine Presque Isle’s enrollment skyrocketed by 171.8% since 2021. The monumental growth is due to the campus’ use of online degree programs.
This growing enrollment is the payoff of planning done by university and system administrators more than a decade ago in preparation for a decline in college-aged students due to lower birth rates in the late 2000s during the Great Recession. Birth-rate projections predict the number of high school graduates will drop 13% by 2041, shrinking the number of college-age students.
As colleges and universities prepare for fewer high school graduates, online programs have become a part of their plans to keep their budgets and tuition bases stable. UMaine Presque Isle’s online program has tapped into the non-traditional student population at an unexpectedly high rate.
The school’s president, Raymond Rice, wasn’t at the helm when he was part of the planning process for the system’s vision for online competency-based programs that started more than a decade ago. Now his campus has the largest enrollment growth in the system.
Of the 2,939 students on campus as of Oct. 15, roughly 2,200 take online courses, Rice said.
The competency-based degree program the campus offers through YourPace is based on a student’s mastery of the subject and not how many hours they have spent toward their degree. The flexibility this offers for scheduling and the length of time needed to earn a degree is among the reasons the program has been so popular with students, Rice said.
“We meet the students where they are and meet the needs as they are,” Rice said.
Plans to combat demographic changes due to falling birth rates have been in the works since before Chancellor of the University of Maine System Dannel Malloy was appointed in 2019, Malloy said.
The system has been planning to face demographic changes by having a quicker application process, better advertising and more offerings for non-traditional students, Malloy said.
Non-traditional students, students who did not enroll in a college directly following high school, have been drawn to the online programs in larger percentages than younger students, Rice said.
Students between the ages of 20 and 26 make up about 5% of the UMaine Presque Isle student body, just slightly higher than students 60 or older, who make up 3%. The largest demographic of students are aged 30 to 50, Rice said.
While non-traditional students make up a majority of the online program, Malloy said campuses across the system are still attracting graduating high school students. The online degree paths allow for other students to complete their degree when they’re able to by offering six start times across the year that aren’t based on the two-semester schedules broadly used across the country.
“Although we do have non-traditional students coming to us, we also see a number of folks beginning their baccalaureate search or plan who are traditional students, but because of family issues or other issues, can’t spend their time on a campus,” Malloy said.
Enrollment on campuses other than Presque Isle have stayed relatively steady since 2022 with none rising or falling more than 10%. UMaine School of Law saw the second most growth with a 9.8% jump from 2022 while UMaine Farmington had the largest drop at 6.5%.
Rice thinks UMaine Presque Isle’s enrollment will continue to grow.
“I would have been pinching myself waking up from a dream if I could say I’ll have 5,000 students, but I expect in a year we’ll have 5,000 total students, but that number of traditional students won’t have changed,” Rice said.
Presque Isle’s on-campus enrollment has hovered around 800 for multiple years, Rice said.
Before the surge in off-campus enrollment, Rice said he would’ve been happy with the stagnant enrollment numbers in what he called the “worst corner of the worst corner of the worst corner” for college-aged demographics in the country.
“Aroostook County, Maine, New England. Like all three were just like, you know, your deck is stacked against you. But now it’s flipped for the whole system,” Rice said.