Monday, Sept. 13, 2021 | 2 a.m.
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UNLV comes up as a refreshing exception in a new report by the Brookings Institution showing a disquieting trend of public colleges crowding out in-state students by accepting others from across state lines.
In the report, titled “The Great Student Swap,” author Aaron Klein and research assistant Ariel Gelrud Shiro reveal that public flagship universities admitted a growing number of out-of-state students through much of the past 20 years. Examining flagship public universities in a randomly selected group of 16 states, including Nevada, the authors show that the share of in-state students at those institutions shrank 11% from 2002 to 2018. That amounts to a shift of about 7,000 students per year at those schools when coupled with overall enrollment increases during that time.
This movement is great for the colleges — out-of-state students pay higher tuition than their in-state counterparts, so attracting more of them fattens the institutions’ budgets. That’s a particular need at state colleges and universities that find their budgets under stress due to reductions in state and federal funding for higher education.
But the swap isn’t good for students, the authors say. Klein and Shiro estimate that nationally, the shift has resulted in $57 billion of extra out-of-state tuition — and, in turn, billions in student loans — that could have been saved if students had stayed in-state.
“The implications are that more and more students leave school with more student debt, while society at large is no better off or better educated,” Klein and Shiro write.
This is where UNLV comes in. The university is spotlighted in the report as a place that has bucked the trend by going completely the other direction. Its in-state share of students rose from 70% to 81%, while no other university in the sampling did better than to keep its in-state share flat. That was the University of North Carolina, which is under state mandate to maintain a certain percentage of in-state students.
UNLV, on the other hand, had no state law forcing its hand. Rather, the university simply made a commitment to providing more opportunities to local and in-state students, even though the university could have reaped millions more in tuition per year if it had stayed at a 70% in-state rate of students. The state wasn’t much help, either: During the period of the study, state general-fund allocations for higher education rose only slightly when adjusted for inflation.
Yet UNLV elevated itself as an academic institution during that time, achieving elite Carnegie R-1 research status. The authors point to this as “evidence that a university can expand in-state enrollment without compromising its quality.”
Understand, too, that UNLV isn’t simply throwing open its doors and taking anyone who’ll sign up for classes. Klein and Shiro note that UNLV is more selective academically than its northern counterpart, UNR, with UNLV taking in 81% of applicants and UNR taking 88%.
The benefits of UNLV’s approach are plain to see. Keeping seats open for talented local and in-state residents gives more a chance to obtain an affordable education, and leave school without carrying a crushing load of student debt. This is especially important for students from working-class and low-income families who might struggle to pay out-of-state tuition.
UNLV and our entire community reap benefits from this approach too. It creates a springboard for local students to enter professional fields and provides local employers with a steady supply of well-educated job recruits.
State lawmakers should take notice of the report, and UNLV’s special part in it. It makes a compelling argument for additional state funding for our local university.
This would be money well spent for Nevada families, for the university and, by extension, our entire community.
On a final note, we can’t help but note that UNR’s share of in-state students dropped 15%. This is a university that gets more state funding on a per-student basis than UNLV. Hint, hint lawmakers.
Read the full report here.
