Future Students, Future Revenues: Thriving in a Decade of Demographic Decline:

Over the past decade, universities were able to grow revenue primarily by growing enrollment and increasing net tuition per student. But demographic and economic changes will make it increasingly difficult for all but a handful of institutions to grow tuition revenue at historic rates. Despite rising access rates, demographic projections suggest that the number of high school graduates will decline over the coming decade, leading to a dramatic drop-off in the overall rate of enrollment growth. The traditional population of 18- to 22-year-olds will remain a majority at most institutions, but enrollment growth will come primarily from other student segments. Populations such as community college transfers, international undergraduates, professional master’s students, and adult degree completers offer the best opportunities to grow enrollment and tuition revenue. Serving them well requires significant investments, new organizational models, and cultural change on campus. This can be done in a financially sustainable way—fulfilling the university’s mission to serve a diverse range of students while providing financial resources to support the core. This brief analyzes the forces that will shape higher education over the next decade and highlights the strategies and competencies that colleges and universities will need to be successful.

Creating High-Impact Workforce Development Programs

As communities across the nation continue to face persistent unemployment, many states are turning to community college workforce development programs to combat joblessness. However, state governments and community colleges alike are often unable to devote significant resources to building new workforce initiatives. This brief examines how community colleges in four states have worked with state governments and other partners to overcome budget constraints and create effective workforce development programs, highlighting funding models and innovative practices to make efficient use of limited resources.

Undergraduate Scholarship in the College of Arts and Sciences 2011 Book of Abstracts

The College of Arts and Sciences proudly presents Undergraduate Scholarship in the College of Arts and Sciences Book of Abstracts, our ninth annual issue documenting the work conducted by students in collaboration with their faculty mentors. As you will see by the depth and variety of the projects, these students successfully used their research, critical thinking, and writing skills to produce scholarship that has been recognized by the larger scholarly community.

Undergraduate Scholarship in the College of Arts and Sciences Book of Abstracts 2009 Book of Abstracts

The College of Arts and Sciences proudly presents the seventh Book of Abstracts, highlighting the undergraduate scholarship conducted by students in collaboration with faculty mentors. This collection of abstracts represents many hours of scholarly activity in which students further developed their research, critical thinking, and writing skills and engaged in learning well beyond the classroom. We congratulate the students and their faculty mentors for the quality of their work and their willingness to share it with the academic community through publications in refereed journals and presentations at regional, national, and international meetings. We also thank Evan Adams for editing the abstracts and Chris Richter, a visual communication design major, for designing the cover and producing the book.

Undergraduate Scholarship in the College of Arts and Sciences 2004 Book of Abstracts

In his work entitled The Advancement of Learning (1605), Francis Bacon expresses the need for students and their teachers to push beyond current knowledge by testing accepted theories, developing new paradigms, and discovering new information. The abstracts in this booklet are clear examples of how students and faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences are advancing knowledge in a variety of disciplines. From the analysis of particular proteins to the examination of various literary themes, the students whose scholarly endeavors are represented in this booklet pursued research projects that have explored new ideas; and their teachers have helped them to achieve their goals by providing expert guidance in the field of study, by challenging students to excel, and by encouraging them as they developed their ideas. Students and faculty should be very proud of the work reflected in these abstracts. These individual efforts and collaborations reveal what is best about Winthrop University as a learning community.

Undergraduate Scholarship in the College of Arts and Sciences 2005 Book of Abstracts

The College of Arts and Sciences proudly presents Undergraduate Scholarship in the College of Arts and Sciences, the third issue in our annual book of abstracts, containing the work conducted by students in collaboration with faculty mentors. As you will see by the depth and variety of the projects, these students successfully used their research, critical thinking, and writing skills to produce scholarship that has been recognized by the larger scholarly community. In fact, these collected works illustrate the students’ ability to communicate at a professional level; in many cases, these students have presented and defended their scholarship to the greater academic community at regional, national, and international meetings. We congratulate all the students and faculty mentors who are represented in this collection for their dedication to learning. This book is also the first designed and edited by Winthrop University undergraduate students. For their good work, we thank Kristen Jeffords for editing the abstracts, Paul Jones for creating the cover art, and Stephanie Sheldon for the book design and layout.