Admissions Drop: Reasons and Effects

For the third year in a row, the University of Mississippi has had a decline in student enrollment. The Mississippi Public Universities report shows that the decrease is 817 or 3.5% of students lost compared to last year’s numbers.
“Over the past several years, incoming students report “academic reputation” and “good program for major” among top reasons for selecting our university,” Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Noel Wilkin said. “At the same time, many factors contribute to enrollment trends, including the number of high school graduates, how merit-based financial aid is awarded, university awareness and competition from other universities, among others. It is difficult to pinpoint exact causes for changes in enrollment from year to year.”
One of the factors for declined university enrollment is technical and trade schools. From 1999 to 2014 the enrollment for students in trade schools went from about 9.66 million students to 16 million, according to The Quad.
“My kids are starting to graduate from high school and go to college,” said a University of Mississippi alumni’s wife. “We got them books to study for the ACT, but their school started pushing for more of the students to go to technical schools instead of college. I haven’t seen them push technical schools like this since I was in high school.”
There is an appeal to trade and technical schools. The cost of a two-year degree is about $33,000 compared to the average bachelor’s degree at $127,000.
With the higher cost of a bachelor’s degree and tuition to get those degrees raising, some students may not find the debt they will have worth the degree.
Most professional sectors have gone into shortages due to the drop in enrollment, the one for teachers is starting to become more apparent.
There are more than 300,000 public teaching positions unfilled that are needed to be, according to Axios.
In Mississippi, the 2018-19 teacher shortage was in foreign languages, math, science and special education.
“I think [the drop of enrollment and the teacher shortage] have direct relations,” education major Ashlign Shoemaker said. “People are taking alternative routes to get certified then dropping their first year of teaching due to inadequate preparations.”
The usual way to become a teacher in Mississippi is to receive a bachelor’s degree, Teacher Certification Programs which include student teaching, the Pre Professional Skills Test and the Praxis II: Subject Tests.
There are four state-approved alternate routes in Mississippi: pursuing a Master of Arts in Teaching without a bachelor’s degree in education, pursuing the MS Alternate Path to Quality Teachers (MAPQT), participating in the Teach Mississippi Institute or the American Board for the Certification of Teacher Excellence (ABCTE) alternative certification program.
The MAPQT license requires a bachelor’s degree with a GPA of 2.75 in the coursework for the requested content area and completion of an approved training program with 90 clock hours.
The Teach Mississippi Institute is an online program that is broken up into two parts and goes over classroom instruction, teaching strategies, classroom management, Mississippi College and Career-Ready Standards and planning and instructional methodologies.
The ABCTE requires the user to have a bachelor’s degree and to submit their university transcripts to the American Board. They must then pass the Professional Teaching Knowledge exam, which is a 100-150 multiple choice test with a writing component, and the American Board exam of their chosen subject.