Weekly Briefing: What Caused This Flagship’s Enrollment to Plunge?

The University of Montana lost more students in this decade than any other institution like it. Here’s why. [Weekly Briefing] By Fernanda Zamudio-Suaréz A flagship university lost 40 percent of its undergraduates in the last decade. Why? [Image] Patrick Record, AP Images Higher education has seen a handful of high-profile enrollment crises in the last 10 years. When things go wrong, and a major university starts bleeding undergraduates, there’s a tendency to find the one thing that made it all go south. But as a careful observer, I’ve learned that’s not how it works. ADVERTISEMENT [advertisement]( It’s never just one domino that causes the rest to fall. Our Sarah Brown has an eye for this type of story. Think back to November 2015, when students of color at the University of Missouri at Columbia staged demonstrations over what they perceived as administrative indifference to campus racism. Their protests inspired student activists nationwide, and Melissa Click became something of a household name in higher ed. That same year, the author Jon Krakauer published the book Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town, an exposé about how the University of Montana at Missoula mishandled sexual-misconduct cases. Both flagship universities saw their enrollments plummet after the scandals. In 2017, Sarah reported on how Mizzou’s freshman class had [shrunk by 35 percent in two years](. This week, she and our Dan Bauman looked into Montana’s woes, and discovered that no public flagship has lost more undergraduates in the last decade. At first glance, it’s easy to blame these woes on the scandals alone. But at Mizzou and Montana, the precipitating controversies weren’t the sole causes of the campuses’ troubles, Sarah told me. They were part of a larger, perfect storm. Take Montana: For many years, it relied on the state’s high-school graduates to fill its undergraduate class but didn’t do much to recruit them. Meanwhile, the institution down the road, Montana State University, dialed up its marketing. In Big Sky country, there’s a clear divide between the two universities. Montana State focuses on the STEM disciplines, and Montana is a liberal-arts institution. After the 2008 economic recession, you can imagine which institution politicians and parents encouraged students to attend. But now what? After Mizzou’s enrollment decline, the campus had to do some serious soul-searching. [Administrators traveled the state]( to ask people what they thought of the university and to understand how the campus could better serve the state. Later, Mizzou ramped up its marketing, in part to take back control of the public narrative about the institution. Will Montana follow suit? We’ll all have to stay tuned to find out. [In the meantime, read Sarah and Dan’s story.]( Best of the rest. [Image] Ikon Images via AP Images - Last week a professor at the University of Texas at Austin discovered that more than 70 students had participated in a class group chat where information about lab and exam answers had been shared. He wants to fail those students for cheating. But with so much technology at students' disposal these days, [what qualifies as cheating?]( - A controversy starring a tipster and 11 criminologists has divided the field and raised familiar questions about transparency in the social sciences. [Tom Bartlett gets to the bottom of this saga]( between a professor and his mentor. Movers and shakers. Job changes in higher education are hard to keep up with. Here are some of this week’s biggest ones. - Tonjanita Johnson, executive vice president and chief operating officer for the University of Tennessee system, [has been named]( senior vice chancellor for academic and student affairs for the University of Alabama system. - Tony Digiovanni, interim chief executive of Claremont Lincoln University, in California, [has been named]( president and CEO. - Christine M. Wilson, assistant vice president for student affairs and director of student activities at the University of Connecticut, [has been named]( vice president for student affairs at the University of Maine at Farmington. - Melony Sacopulos, an assistant professor of accounting and law and a former general counsel at Indiana State University, [will become]( vice president for finance and business at Monmouth College on December 1. Lagniappe. [Image] Wilfried Glienke, AP Images - Learn. Maybe you’ve heard, but there’s a climate crisis going on. Here’s one small change you can make: [Buy more sustainable clothing.]( - Watch. This is as adorable as it is informative. Kid chess champions [share their secrets]( The Atlantic. - Listen. Calling all tenure-track, tenured, and dreaming-of-tenure scholars: I have a playlist for you. This week, Daily Briefing readers sent in their suggestions for the [Earn Tenure playlist](. It’s motivational and cathartic, so enjoy. - Read. This is [a wild story]( of a man who made his own nuclear bunker. The tale ended with a shocking death. Next week. I’ll be off next Friday, making a pilgrimage to the land where [my favorite novels]( are set. Don’t worry, folks, you’ll be in good hands with Nick DeSantis. In the meantime, I want to know: How am I doing? What’s one thing you like about the new Weekly Briefing? What’s something you’d like to change? Send me your feedback: fernanda@chronicle.com. Ciao, — Fernanda Subscribe Today The Chronicle’s award-winning journalism challenges conventional wisdom, holds academic leaders accountable, and empowers you to do your job better — and it’s your support that makes our work possible. [Subscribe Today]( This Week's Top Reads Technology [A Professor Wants to Fail Students for Sharing Information in an Online Chat. But Has Tech Changed What Qualifies as Cheating?]( He did not discriminate between those who shared information and those merely in the online group. The situation shows higher education’s fraught relationship with new digital tools. (PREMIUM) ADVERTISEMENT [advertisement]( The Chronicle Review [The Criminologist Accused of Cooking the Books]( An anonymous whistle-blower, a police investigation, and the battle between a professor and his mentor. (PREMIUM) Paid for and Created by McGraw Hill [Teachers Will Drive Equity at Scale by Becoming Adaptive Learning’s Biggest Advocates]( Reshaping the relationship of teacher and student, adaptive learning systems allow students to progress when they are ready, not when the class or teacher is ready. Latest Jobs Visit [ChronicleVitae.com]( to view the latest jobs in higher education. --------------------------------------------------------------- [Sign up]( for other newsletters, [stop receiving]( this email, or [view]( our privacy policy. © 2019 [The Chronicle of Higher Education]( 1255 23rd Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20037 [The Chronicle of Higher Education](