INTRODUCTION

America’s colleges and universities are at a crossroads. The number of schools closing their doors continues to grow driven by the declining number of students pursuing a bachelor’s. This situation is expected to worsen because of a number of factors.

• Starting in 2025 the U.S. will face the so-called “enrollment cliff,” in which the population of college aid students will drop by 15% over four years. Colleges can expect to lose over 575,000 students over that four-year time span.

• The strong labor market has led more high school graduates to delay indefinitely their pursuit of a bachelor’s degree.

• Young Americans have become increasingly skeptical of the value of a college degree. The rising cost of college and the amount of debt students are required to take in order to graduate has re-enforced this viewpoint.

In the past when faced with funding shortfalls, colleges and universities have attempted to “grow their way” out of the problem. Many offered new graduate programs, including terminal master’s degrees (no doctoral option) and certificates. Purdue University, under former President Mitch Daniels, purchased the mostly for-profit Kaplan University in 2017 and turned it into Purdue Global, with approximately 30,000 online students paying full price. Other colleges and universities also began increasing their online offerings to expand their access to a larger number of part-time graduate students. But unlike Daniels and Purdue — who used the revenue to hold undergraduate tuition flat for a decade — most schools simply used the funds to avoid making tough choices such as cutting expenses.

Other approaches included the recruitment of international students interested in pursuing a degree at an elite American college, particularly wealthy Chinese students. At present, there are around 290,086 Chinese students attending university in the U.S., with another 199,182 from India.

But growth strategies won’t work as effectively going forward. Most leading universities now have extensive online programs and in recent years the number of international students coming to study in the U.S. has begun to recede as more options become available elsewhere. While some elite universities can increase the number of undergraduates they enroll, others, particularly those that are more tuition-dependent, will be forced to close or merge with other institutions.

There is another alternative, however, which is for schools to streamline their costs and pass some of the savings on to students in the form of increased scholarships, lower tuition, or a combination of both. Specifically, colleges could cut non-faculty positions by 1% per year over the next five years and use the savings to reduce tuition.

For several decades, higher education has experienced a significant upswing in administrative spending and it is projected to continue to grow by seven percent over the next 10 years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Non-instructional spending, which includes spending on administration and student services, outpaced instructional spending from 2010 to 2018, according to the Council of Trustees and Alumni. During that period spending on student services rose a sizable 29% and administrative costs increased 19%, while instructional spending only rose 17% by comparison.

Not only did spending for administration and student services increase, so too did the number of employees in those areas. Between 1976 and 2018, the number of full-time faculty employed at colleges and universities in the U.S. increased by 92%, during which time total student enrollment increased by 78%. During this same period, however, full-time administrators and other professionals employed by those institutions increased by 164% and 452%, respectively.

There is little evidence that the dramatic expansion in staffing for administrative and student services improved students’ academic experience. In fact, some observers contend that the explosion in non-faculty has made it harder for faculty to educate students. In part, because many of these administrators have to justify their existence by creating more regulations and processes. As Todd Zywicki, a law professor at George Mason University has noted, “The interesting thing about the administrative bloat in higher education is, literally, nobody knows who all these people are or what they’re doing.

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INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICTS WORKING TOGETHER TO MAXIMIZE STUDENTS’ COLLEGE AND CAREER PATHWAYS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Nearly 1 in 5 U.S. students attend rural schools. That’s about 9.3 million kids. Yet, during policy discussions, rural schools’ unique challenges are often eclipsed by those of their urban and suburban counterparts. This report is a case study of an innovative, replicable public education experiment at three rural Texas high schools called the Rural Schools Innovation Zone (RSIZ). This first-of-its-kind experiment is a collaboration between three rural school districts focusing on college attainment and career pathways for the 21st-century job market.

It is proving so successful that the Texas state legislature passed a bill designating funding to incentivize more school districts to adopt the model. The bill became law on June 2, 2023. Texas’ significant step forward for equity and rural workforce development deserves national attention.

By raw numbers, Texas is responsible for educating more rural students than any other state, given its vast metropolises, but it isn’t even among the top 10 states with the largest percentage of rural students. The 2018-2019 Report of the Rural Schools and Community Trust found that rural public schools account for more than half of schools in 12 states. In Vermont (55%) and Maine (54%), more than half of students live in non-metro areas. In 18 other states, rural students account for 30% to 49% of the student population. Those states are spread through every geographic region in the country. More American students attend rural schools than the largest 85 school districts combined.

And, rural schools are becoming more diverse, gaining more English as a second language (ESL) and special education students in recent years, while seeing White rural students decrease by 3%. Today, nearly one-in-three rural students are non-White.

While rural demographics are changing, rural poverty is stubborn. According to the most recent estimates from the 2019 American Community Survey, the non-metro poverty rate was 15.4% in 2019, compared with 11.9% in metro areas. Poverty is more severe for rural children and minorities. Almost 23% of rural children under the age of 18 live in poverty, compared to just under 17.7% of non-rural children. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 30.7% of rural Black Americans, 29.6% of American Indian/Alaska natives, and 21.7% of rural Hispanic Americans live in poverty, compared to 12.7% of White rural citizens. The Rural School and Community Trust report found that nationwide, the communities surrounding schools in rural districts on average had a household income of just 2.68 times the poverty line.

Those statistics point to the urgency of the need to improve school systems that serve rural students. Providing regionally relevant career and technical education (CTE) is especially important, as 42% of rural Americans say finding a job is a major concern, while only 39% of them are willing to move from home to find work. Innovating to provide rural high school students with equitable access to college and/or career readiness opportunities for regionally available jobs is a national imperative that requires us to think in new ways and to try new things. Traditional, one-size-fits-all school districts must yield to more flexible programming.

This is why it is worthy to discuss the successful experiment just codified into state law in Texas. The goal of this case study is to explain and publicize the initiative, called the Rural Schools Innovation Zone (RSIZ), in the hopes that other states with significant rural populations may consider it as a tool for combating challenges, including institutional stagnation, isolation, underfunding, and generational poverty, that prevent rural school students from graduating college or career ready.

The report is organized into the following sections:

• Presenting the Rural Schools Innovations Zone (RSIZ) as a 21st-century model for expanding career pathways and preparation, including early credit and industry certification components;

• Quantifying the challenges rural schools experience;

• Understanding the RSIZ career pathways and early college “academies”;

• Designing and implementing the RSIZ collaboration between three independent school districts:

– Structuring the governance and leadership framework;
– Aligning career pathways to the local economy;
– Student recruitment;
– Student outcomes

• Operating the RSIZ:

– Finance and funding streams;
– Human capital;
– Scheduling and transportation;
– Data sharing;

• Codifying the RSIZ collaborative and conclusion.

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