GFU Charts Out Academic Priorities Amidst Challenging Market Landscape
Reported By: Sophia Lumsdaine
Photo From: georgefox.edu
According to Mary Peterson, George Fox University (GFU) vice president of Academic Operations, “[the academic] strategy at the university over the last ten years has been investing in [...] ‘high barrier, high demand programs.’”
Essentially these are programs that require significant investment of university resources but also attract significant numbers of students. Most of these “high barrier, high demand programs” are graduate health science programs–including programs that the university has added in recent years and ones that are scheduled for introduction in the next several years. As a result of the university’s new academic strategy, many undergraduate academic programs have been downsized, consolidated, or eliminated altogether.
In 2020, GFU cut the journalism, French, and international studies majors, and in 2021, it cut theater, sociology, music education, health and human performance, chemistry, information systems, and Spanish majors. Many of these programs were downsized into minors, made into concentrations, or restructured and relabeled. Peterson stated that the university was looking at expanding its computer science, Artificial Intelligence, and cybersecurity undergraduate programs in the coming years.
Meanwhile, GFU has recently added physical therapy, physician’s assistant, and occupational therapy graduate and doctorate programs. In the next three years, the university will be adding a doctorate of nursing practice in three phases: a nurse anesthesiologist program in 2025, a midwifery program in 2026, and a psychiatric nurse practitioner program in 2027. GFU’s master's of social work will be moving completely online next year.
When making decisions about the university’s academic offerings, Peterson stated that if there was any one factor she was committed to, it was “data-driven decision-making.” Peterson specified that this meant analyzing programs based on three main measurements: enrollment (which includes both annual growth and absolute numbers), student efficiency (meaning how much the university puts into a program versus how many students benefit from it), and job outcomes associated with a given program. Together, these variables form a composite score, which reflects their numeric value to the university.
“If there’s a shrinking demand for [a program], then we don’t want to invest in that,” Peterson said. She also stated that monetary success and job outlooks associated with areas of study were important factors in the university’s decision-making. “I need to know that [students] are going to go out into a job market where they’re going to make a good salary,” said Peterson. “I look for programs where there’s an excellent job outlook, because why would I want to train students unless there was an excellent job outlook for them?”
Despite the university emphasizing graduate health science programs and cutting back on undergraduate liberal arts and social science programs in recent years, the Vice President of enrollment and marketing, Lindsay Knox, said that she does not see this as changing the focus in marketing. Knox stated that her job was to “tell good stories” about the university.
“We aren’t trying to tell more engineering stories or tell more nursing stories or tell more business stories or tell more STEM stories,” Knox said. “We’re actually trying to tell all stories, because the more diverse and wide-ranging our stories are, the more attractive we’ll be to students.”
Knox also stated that GFU does not market specific undergraduate majors because students’ reasons for choosing GFU in undergrad is based on a complex array of factors. These factors are often more focused on university values, community, extracurricular opportunities, and location, rather than a particular academic program.
With the exception of some undergraduate nursing and engineering advertising intended to raise the overall profile of the university rather than to promote those majors, marketing for specific academic tracks is directed toward graduate programs.
Nationwide, the number of college-age young adults is dropping, and within that drop, a growing percentage of young adults are choosing not to attend college at all. As a result, although the university currently has “more undergraduate students than graduates, [that] could change over time,” Knox said. “That’s not necessarily our hope, she continued, “but it may be our reality.”
Accordingly, while GFU will continue to invest just as much effort into marketing its undergraduate programs as it has for the past decade, it will also prioritize investment in graduate health science programs, which Peterson said has already “provided a lot of stability for the university.”