BYU’s enrollment decreased this semester due to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ new policy lowering the required age of missionaries.
The official numbers are still being calculated, but the impact at BYU has been estimated at a 10 percent decrease, says Todd Hollingshead, an information manager at BYU’s University Communications.
“We’ve seen a decrease in our enrollment,” Hollingshead says. “We don’t have the final numbers — we’ll probably have them within a month — but our closest estimates show that we are down about 10 percent overall.”
An announcement by LDS Church President Thomas Monson in Oct. 2012 lowered the missionary age for young men who have graduated high school to 18. Young women can now serve missions at the age of 19. The pervious age limit was 19 for men and 21 for women.
Since the decrease in the required age limit, the number of young adults applying to go on a mission has increased dramatically. According to the Deseret News, the LDS Church predicts a 47 percent increase in young missionaries. An estimated 85,000 LDS missionaries will be active come fall 2013.
The U wasn’t given any warning of the changes by the LDS Church, says Matthew Lopez, director of the Office of Admissions at the U. He says the new policy and its results were unknown.
“I don’t think anyone had any idea of the magnitude,” Lopez says.
Hollingshead says the announcement came as a surprise to BYU’s administration as well. Hollingshead says he and his department found out when Monson announced the decision during General Conference.
“It was an exciting announcement,” Hollingshead says, “but we also knew — ‘okay, this is going to change some things.’ ”
According to BYU’s facts web page, 33,336 students were enrolled in Fall Semester 2012. According to the U’s Office of Budget and Institutional Analysis, the U’s Fall Semester 2012 enrollment numbers were 32,388. However, with the expected 10 percent decrease this year at BYU, their numbers are likely to be closer to 30,000.
The LDS Church’s announcement had a considerably smaller impact on the U. Though the U has not released the official fall enrollment count, Lopez says, the U managed “pretty good” during the changes.
“It appears that overall enrollment is essentially stable, if not right on the money.” Lopez says.
The new age policy understandably would impact BYU’s enrollment considerably more that the U’s. BYU lists its demographics online, and it cites 98.5 percent of its student body are LDS.
Hollingshead says the enrollment numbers at BYU are not necessarily down. The same numbers of students are applying, but many of those students are deferring their first two years in college and opting to serve a mission.
“We’ve admitted the same amount of students as we have in the past, but we didn’t know how many of those were going to defer their enrollment,” he says.
Hollingshead says his office anticipated a decrease in freshman attendance, though no one knew for certain the size, and that the decrease does correlate with the LDS Church’s announcement.
“The two demographics where we are seeing the decrease,” Hollingshead says, “it is in our freshmen male students and in our female students who are in the 19-21 age group.”
The U and BYU approached this announcement differently. The U’s approach to this change was extremely “diligent,” Lopez says, and committees were formed to assess the potential positive and negative consequences.
“I’m proud of this campus because we, I think, took a very aggressive viewpoint, and rather than wait-and-see attitude. We tried to take matters in our own hands,” Lopez says.
BYU, in contrast, took a more wait-and-see approach, Hollingshead says. He says his office has been watching the enrollment numbers as Fall Semester was approaching, and they realized that there were going to be fewer students in some of the classes.
“As we looked at it [the enrollment numbers]” Hollingshead says, “we thought — we’re not going to make any major changes.”
In part, the U’s aggressive position to stabilize enrollment during this change was to recruit out-of-state students, according to a recent report by The Salt Lake Tribune.
A bill known as S.B. 51, passed last February in the state legislature, removed the previous cap on the number of out-of-state tuition waivers a school can grant. The waivers can be granted for outstanding academic achievement, or they can be granted to descendents of alumni. The latter are called alumni legacy nonresident scholarships.
The bill will allow out-of-state tuition wavers for children of alumni because it helps to “recognize the legacy of past graduates and promote a continued connection to their alma mater.”
While the legislation might have had a positive impact on the enrollment of public universities in Utah, Hollingshead says it had little impact on BYU’s policies.
BYU is a private institution and does not charge students for being out-of-state residents. Instead, their tuition fluctuations are based on church membership.
“[Tuition] is not based on instate or out-of-state,” Hollingshead says, “but based on if you are a member of the LDS church.”
Both the U and BYU have updated and expanded their deferment program for missionaries. The deferment programs tailored for LDS missionaries allow students to leave college once they are enrolled, whether before their first semester or during their junior year.
“Through the summer you decide to serve a mission,” Hollingshead says, “you get a call to serve a mission then you can call the admissions office and apply for a deferment. Which guarantees your admission when you get back from your mission.”
The U also implemented a similar deferment program.
“Even though potential students might be considering a mission,” Lopez says, “we still want them to apply. We have a great deferment process that will allow them to stay in great standing with the university and have a seamless reentry.”
Hollingshead has a positive outlook on the circumstance.
“Overall, in 18 to 24 months,” Hollingshead says, “those people who are gone on missions will be returning and things will be coming back to normal.”