Will students return to Boise State this fall? Millions of dollars depend on the answer
As Boise State University prepares for a possible fall semester, one question looms over the campus: How many students will show up?
Tens of millions of dollars, and a wave of jobs, rely on the answer.
“I seriously wish I could look into a crystal ball and know what this fall looks like,” Mark Heil, Boise State Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, said Tuesday during an employee town hall. “But I can’t, and it’s very stressful.”
A drop in enrollment quickly leads to some ugly arithmetic for Boise State, Idaho’s largest university.
Boise State President Marlene Tromp cited a national study last week with a projected 22% enrollment drop for the fall semester. That could cost Boise State $26.2 million in tuition, student fees, housing and a host of other student revenues, the Idaho Statesman found by reviewing projected budgets for the current school year.
Add in the expected 5% holdback in state funding, and that swells to $28.85 million for the fall semester. If those shortfalls lasted the entire 2020-21 academic year, they would grow to $57.7 million — or 10% of the university’s $575 million overall budget.
Tromp called the upcoming semester “the most unpredictable and uncertain fall term many of us will have ever encountered,” in a letter to staff this week obtained by Idaho Ed News.
“Put bluntly, we face uncertainty across our organization — and our decisions will be greatly influenced by several things we simply cannot control,” Tromp wrote.
UNCERTAIN BUDGET FUTURE
A 10% budget deficit could just be the start, though.
Out-of-state students pay up to three times the tuition of an in-state student. So if out-of-state students remain closer to home, tuition revenue would tumble even further.
Idaho’s state government could withhold more tax revenue. It already did that twice this academic year, including once well before the coronavirus pandemic.
Idaho doesn’t yet know how much tax revenue it will lose during the pandemic. But early national indicators aren’t pretty. The Congressional Budget Office predicted national gross domestic product would fall 40% from April to June — the largest drop since records started in 1947.
And to top it all off, the Broncos’ football season also remains in doubt.
Boise State’s football team brought in $24.7 million in revenue in the fall of 2018, according to the most recent financial report with the NCAA. But Mountain West Commissioner Craig Thompson said the conference will not have a football season unless campuses are open and fully operational.
Shawn Miller, the head of Boise State’s human resources, told worried employees during Tuesday’s town hall to watch those three indicators — enrollment, state funding and football — for signs of what’s to come.
“There is no other memo, no other document or anything that has numbers on a page or anything related to budget reductions or layoffs,” Miller said. “Again, it’s watching those three main financial drivers to see what happens.
“If those numbers start to trend upwards, that’s the hope. And if they don’t … we’ll continue to have more transparency in decisions that have to be made that will be critical for the organization.”
ENROLLMENT PROJECTIONS ARE TOUGH
Tromp bragged during an April 6 State Board of Education meeting universities have nearly perfected the science of predicting student enrollment. But none of those models planned for a global pandemic.
“Right now, it feels like everything has been thrown up in the air,” Tromp said during the meeting.
That uncertainty extends to every industry. But it could wreak havoc in higher education, where several recent studies paint a stark picture.
One survey showed 17% of high school seniors who planned to attend a four-year college this fall said they will not.
Another survey showed 26% of current college students said they were unlikely to return to college in the fall or said it was “too soon to tell.”
And a parent survey found 40% said they were very likely or somewhat likely to delay sending their children to college.
BOISE STATE CHANGES EMPLOYEES’ STATUS
Boise State has already started preparing for a crisis.
The State Board of Education suspended a set of employment rules for professional staff Monday. Later that day, Boise State eliminated future contracts for its professional staff, making them at-will employees it can furlough, lay off or terminate at a moment’s notice.
Professional staff make up 40% of all Boise State employees. They include salaried and non-faculty employees ranging from communications to student affairs to operations and facilities.
“Such flexibility could be critical in staving off other, more drastic measures in the event of a significant enrollment decline,” Tromp wrote in an email to employees.
Tromp added the move may not prevent more furloughs, salary reductions or job losses if the worst-case scenarios come true.
OPENING IN THE FALL STILL A QUESTION
Idaho, Idaho State, Northwest Nazarene and the College of Idaho have publicly declared they plan to reopen for the fall semester. The coronavirus could derail those plans, but Boise State has not made any public declarations for a fall semester.
A Thursday email to employees said Boise State aims to set a plan by May 25 to return students to campus, minimize risk in student housing and establish contingency plans for a second outbreak.
“The university’s goal is to resume as many face-to-face courses this fall as we are able to with appropriate social distancing and enhanced cleaning protocols,” the email read.
During Tuesday’s employee town hall, Heil said the university just doesn’t know enough to make any proclamations. He said if Gov. Brad Little’s plan to reopen Idaho went to script, Boise State could host a normal or close-to-normal fall semester. But any setbacks could send Idaho, and its universities, back to the starting line.
“There’s a chance that we have this accordion effect,” Heil said, “where we expand and contract.”
