In the last three years, Lewis & Clark experienced a record high number of freshmen, resulting in overcrowded conditions in the dorms as well as the conversion of some lounges to dorm rooms. On top of the larger freshman classes, there were significant numbers of gap-year students entering LC due to the COVID-19 pandemic hindering their initial college decisions. This year, though, has marked a turn away from large class sizes, with LC welcoming a much smaller incoming class than in the past few years.
Eric Staab, the vice president for admissions and financial aid, noted that the smaller incoming freshman class generated less revenue, forcing LC to make budgetary adjustments.
“We’ve already made our budgetary adjustments,” Staab explained. “So it’s not good. A smaller number of people coming in, smaller than what’s budgeted, means less revenue, which does put some restrictions on what we could do in any given year. So that’s it, but it’s not crippling, not anything that’s going to put the college in danger.”
The college managed to avoid more significant budget cuts due to residual funding from higher enrollment in previous years.
“We’ve had some really strong enrollment years and in earlier years, and that helped to bring in a strong amount of cash flow,” Staab explained. “So we had reserves available to be able to adjust and accommodate. That’s one of the factors that the College was able to pull on in order to balance out the budget without forcing us to do any deep cuts that any student would ever notice.”
Compared to last year’s 553 first-year students, there are 485 in this fall semester’s freshman class. According to Hollie M. Elliott, the Associate Vice President for Admissions, LC hoped to enroll 625 first-year students. Elliot believes that issues with the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) this year may explain the smaller freshman class.
“There are certain components we have control of, and we can manage things like, where do we go visit high schools? Where do we offer interviews? What kind of outreach are we doing, by email, by text message? Those kinds of things,” said Elliott. “Every year, though there’s things that we can’t control. And for this year, the big thing that we couldn’t control was the FAFSA … It’s supposed to open on October 1, and most years, that’s when it opens. And when it does that, it allows us to give them an idea of what it’s going to cost to attend.”
Last year, the federal government sought to update the FAFSA, intending to make it easier for students to navigate. During the rollout, it experienced glitches and failed to share the applicants’ data with colleges, causing multiple delays. As a result, many colleges — including LC — had to postpone the FAFSA submission deadline.
According to Elliott, LC did not receive data from the FAFSA until February, which presented difficulties. Students did not receive financial aid awards from FAFSA until March, which impacted every college in the country. With financial aid awards stuck in limbo last spring, Elliott believed that numerous applicants turned to public colleges due to LC’s high tuition cost before financial aid and pressure from looming admissions deadlines.
“We think a lot of families chose an option that looked less expensive by sticker price without waiting to get all the information,” Elliott explained. “Because every year we know there are students at Lewis & Clark who don’t pay more to go to LC than they would pay to go to a public institution.”
Staab agreed that the issues with the FAFSA contributed to the smaller class size, with many freshmen turning to public colleges. Some were discouraged by the admission fees amidst high inflation, based on a survey that the admissions board conducted on incoming students.
“And since the inflation rate has been running a little high in the past year and a half, it has made families make different decisions about their purchasing, certainly for college as well.”
Despite this year’s smaller freshman student body, LC’s undergraduate acceptance rate was higher than last year’s as the admission board sought to accommodate the FAFSA issues.
“We actually admitted more students last year than we did the year before or the year before that,” Elliott said. “So we were anticipating this might be a challenging year because of financial aid, and so we did admit at a rate that we thought would accommodate these issues, but it didn’t have the effect that we wanted.”
Furthermore, Elliott explained that despite the FAFSA issues, LC continues to seek making higher education as affordable as possible for incoming students.
“We also feel like we’re doing fairly generous things with financial aid right now. We’re doing our best to try to make this education as affordable as we can to a broad array of students. And so it doesn’t feel like that was the issue, except that we didn’t get to tell them what their financial aid was until later,” Elliot said.
While Elliott had wished for a larger freshman class, she remains hopeful for what the new students will accomplish. Still, the situation for next year remains unknown as the FAFSA has been delayed again.
“Compared to some of our peer institutions, I actually think we did fairly well, and I was really excited to see that we were still able to enroll the class that we were able to enroll, and that the makeup of that class is right on par with what we hoped for,” Elliott said. “So in that way, we did not hit a target, but I also feel like we still got a good class of students. We’re excited for the next cycle. We’re trepidatious because the FAFSA is once again delayed.”
With another year of the FAFSA delayed, LC continues facing the challenge of reaching their goal number of incoming students. However, LC is satisfied with the new students’ high school accomplishments and is hopeful that the freshman class will positively contribute to the school.
Yet, the situation with the FAFSA remains largely unknown for next year. The FAFSA for the 2025-2026 school year will be open Dec. 1, two months later than the usual date of Oct. 1. Whether or not this will impact future classes at LC remains to be seen.
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