The path to growing enrollment and improving graduation rates at Lincoln University should begin with better retention of its current students, LU's president said.
Lincoln University is one of Missouri's smaller four-year universities, with total enrollment hovering between 3,000-4,000 for the last five years.
It fell at No. 35 out of all 201 higher-education schools in the state, according to CollegeStats.org, just between Kirksville's four-year A.T. Still University of Health Sciences and four-year Rockhurst University in Kansas City, based on number of students enrolled.
However, in recent years, LU has noticed further drops in enrollment as well as student retention and graduation. Increasing those numbers has been the focus of Jerald Jones Woolfolk since she took over the president's office a year ago, and it remains her goal going into the 2019-20 academic year.
For Woolfolk, retention is the key issue: Improve retention, and higher enrollment and graduation rates will follow.
Retention
Lincoln has been facing an issue of retention - keeping students past the first year and keeping them until graduation - for several years. Retention rates measure the percentage of students who return for the next fall semester.
First-year retention rates hovered in the range of 46-60 percent from 1995-2010, with a peak of 60 percent in 1996, according to data on the Lincoln University website.
LU measures retention and graduation by fall cohorts - made up of only the first-time, full-time freshmen students attending in the fall semester. They measure first-, second- and third-year retention rates.
The fall 2011 cohort had the lowest set of retention numbers in the last 20 years - 36 percent in the first year, 31 percent in the second year and 25 percent in the third year.
First-year retention rates have been fluctuating since then. In 2012, the rate went back up to 52 percent.
In fall 2013, the school saw it's highest first-year retention rate since 1996, at 64 percent. However, this was inflated due to a pilot project that allowed all students to return the following fall, regardless of cumulative GPA or academic standing, according to the website.
According to data from the National Center for Education Statistics, the average first-year retention rate for four-year institutions in the fall of 2016 was 81 percent. However, numbers were lower for schools with open admissions, like Lincoln, at 59 percent.
That year, Lincoln's first-year retention rate was 53, placing it slightly below the average.
Woolfolk credited the university's high number of first-generation students and students from a lower socioeconomic class as risk factors for retention.
A study released by the U.S. Department of Education in 2018 found 33 percent of first-generation students left postsecondary education without completing a degree, compared to 14 percent of students who had at least one parent with a bachelor's degree.
Part of the issue may be how prepared the students are for college, Woolfolk said. Students with parents who didn't attend college may not have as much support for processes like applying for grants or don't have examples of what to expect in college - something she calls "cultural capital."
"It doesn't mean they don't have the ability," Woolfolk said, but they may need more support to stay in school and graduate.
Many students don't return due to academic reasons like low grades.
Woolfolk said the key is intervening before the academic trouble starts and intentionally providing interventions to help keep the student on the right track. For this, she said, they're focusing on engaging students in supplemental instruction, tutoring and mentorships.
None of this is entirely new.
Lincoln has a student success center, and Woolfolk said she reorganized it when she became president, hoping that would help increase retention.
But, Woolfolk knows it's not an easy feat to increase retention, especially coming up from a low number.
"Retention is one of the hardest things to deal with, so I hope that we can inch up a little bit each year, and maybe in the next two or three years, come up 5 or 6 percent," she said.
Her goal is to eventually see LU with a 75 percent retention rate, which she admits is a lofty goal.
"I'm sure it will not be achieved in the next five years, but we're going to focus on it hard, and hopefully, we'll get it in a place where the next administration that comes after me can move it up even farther," she said.
Enrollment
LU has been in a downtrend of enrollment since 2011, when enrollment for the fall semester reached 3,388 students. Other than an increase of 74 students between 2013-14, the university has seen lowered enrollment each year since, with numbers dropping steadily from 2015 on.
The school reached peak enrollment in 1991 at 4,101 students. But in the fall of 2018, it was tied with its lowest number since 1987 at 2,478 students - a drop of nearly 40 percent from 1991.
The most recent numbers, from spring 2019, show an even lower total enrollment - 2,283 students, with just 12 first-time, first-year freshmen.
But Lincoln isn't the only institution experiencing this drop.
According to data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, overall post-secondary enrollment decreased by 1.7 percent in spring 2019, and public sector enrollment dropped 1.9 percent. The year 2019 marked the eighth straight year of decreased enrollment for post-secondary schools.
The same report showed that Missouri saw a drop of 3 percent in spring 2019, with the total number of enrolled students at 315,219.
Student demographics
LU is one of two historically black colleges or universities in Missouri, the other being the smaller Harris-Stowe State University in St. Louis, which was founded in 1857.
Lincoln was founded in 1866 by Civil War soldiers from the 62nd and 65th Missouri Colored infantry units, as Lincoln Institute to specifically benefit freed African Americans. In 1921, the name was changed to Lincoln University, and following the United States Supreme Court Case Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, LU opened its doors to all who met its entrance criteria.
From 1995-2016, more white students were enrolled at Lincoln than African American students. The disparity reached a peak in 1996, when 73 percent of the student body was white and only 23 percent was black.
In fall 2016, the number reached an almost equality - 45 percent white and 41 percent black. Then, in 2017, black students outnumbered white students for the first time in just over 20 years when black students made up 46 percent of the student body. The trend continued in 2018.
Other races made up small, one digit percentages of the student body until fall of 2012, when they rose to 12 percent. Since then, the percentage has hovered in the low 10s, peaking at 13 percent in 2016.
In comparison, Harris-Stowe State University's student body was 86 percent students of color in fall 2018, according to its website. The university did not list further divisions by race.
Although Woolfolk said her main focus is improving enrollment through retention, the university is also working to increase recruitment. This year, more recruiters were hired and started visiting high schools earlier in the school year.
Woolfolk herself plans to visit Cole County high schools this year; a specific recruiter for schools in Cole and the surrounding counties is being hired.
Graduation rates
Lincoln is similarly struggling with low graduation rates, especially four-year graduation rates.
From 1995-2012, the highest four-year graduation rate was 13 percent for the fall of 1998 cohort. The lowest is just 6 percent for the fall of 2005.
Lincoln's graduation rate data includes only bachelor's degree-seeking students and is measured cumulatively, meaning students who graduated in four years are again included in five- and six-year graduation rates for the same year.
For the cohorts from 2008-12, four-year graduation rates have been in the single digits.
Five- and six-year graduation rates have been higher, especially in the late '90s, when six-year graduation rates reached as high as 35 percent. No graduation rate has been over 30 percent since 1998.
In 2018, the NSC found the fall 2012 cohort, six-year completion rate was 58.3 percent.
Woolfolk said one of her goals is to increase the four-year graduation rates and make sure Lincoln's bachelor's degrees can be completed in four years.
Like with enrollment, Woolfolk said, increasing retention will increase graduation rates.
"If we can retain them at a better rate, then graduation rates will increase," Woolfolk said. "They all kind of go hand in hand."