Shrinking student enrollment puts college towns in a pinch
CLARION, Pa. — For decades, institutions of higher education provided steady, well-paid jobs in small towns where the industrial base was waning. But the tide of young people finishing high school is now also starting to recede, creating a stark new reality for colleges and universities — and the communities that grew up around them.
As Americans have fewer children and a diminishing share of young adults pursue a degree, the onceburgeoning market for college slots has kicked into reverse. Although undergraduate enrollment stabilized somewhat in 2022, it’s still down about 7.6% since 2019.
Evidence of a shrinking student body is everywhere in the western Pennsylvania borough of Clarion, population 3,880, which has taken pride in the graceful campus of Clarion University since the institution was founded as a seminary 156 years ago.
Since 2009, when it had 7,346 students, the university’s enrollment has shrunk by nearly half. With the drop has come the loss of nearly 200 staff members, mostly through attrition.
Last year, the school even lost its name, as it was merged with two of the 13 other universities in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, creating a multicampus university called Pennwest.
Tracy Becker, who looks out on Main Street from her broad desk at the city’s chamber of commerce, said there aren’t as many young volunteers for community events like the annual Autumn Leaf Festival, which has been held during homecoming weekend since 1953.
Kaitlyn Nevel’s cafe used to be staffed mostly with university students; now
she has one such employee. As foot traffic lightened, she branched into catering.
“Ideally, I would love to see the university stay and thrive, but you just have to try and have however many backup plans,” Nevel said.
As Nevel’s resigned optimism suggests, declining enrollment doesn’t necessarily spell doom for college towns.
Despite the lower student head count, few empty storefronts mar Clarion’s downtown. It has even attracted new businesses like Mechanistic Brewing, which Chelsea Alexander started with her husband in 2019 after moving back from Washington.
Alexander is one of 28 people in her family to attend the local university. Since 1905, her family has run a clothing shop in town, which sells a line of T-shirts that trade on alumni nostalgia for favorite eateries that have long since closed and for towering dorms that have been demolished. But as graduating classes shrink, even alumni visits will taper off.
Alexander’s father, Jim Crooks, operates the store,
and he has organized local merchants to spruce up the compact main street and market their businesses to potential visitors who may have no such connection to the town.
“For many years, the university was carrying a lot of the businesses,” said Crooks, who has also converted four apartments above the shop from student housing into Airbnb lodgings. “Everybody’s just saying, ‘We can’t depend on the university.’ ”
As Clarion University’s enrollment began to fall, so did state funding, raising the price of attendance. In 2021, Daniel Greenstein, the chancellor of the State System of Higher Education, proposed forming two clusters of three schools each, to consolidate operations and offer more classes across campuses.
“We had to align our costs with our new enrollment numbers,” Greenstein said. “We were built out as if we were still having 120,000 students when we had 85,000. You just can’t do that. Like every American family, you have to live within your means.”