The University of Hawaii at Hilo released a comprehensive plan earlier this month to halt years of declining enrollment.
UH Hilo’s fall enrollment in 2024 fell 4% from the previous year, with 2,668 students enrolling last year compared to 2,781 in 2023. This drop was the third consecutive year of declining fall enrollment at the campus.
The five-pronged Strategic Enrollment Management Plan includes infrastructure improvements, streamlining the admissions and transfer processes, and adjusting recruitment strategies. The continuous thread throughout the five areas of focus in the SEM lies in enhancing the university’s marketing efforts, said UH Hilo Director of Admissions Kati McGinnis.
“As enrollment has dropped across the country, institutions have invested heavily in marketing,” McGinnis said. “Marketing in higher education is increasingly sophisticated, especially since the pandemic. Investment in and attention to our marketing will help us better align our messaging with prospective students.”
McGinnis said she’s most excited about the SEM Plan’s focus on aligning the campus’ unique identity with its mission through marketing campaigns that will highlight UH Hilo’s commitment to Native Hawaiian culture, sustainability and community by sharing personal stories of students.
Cross-campus collaboration through workshops, as well as engaging alumni networks and community leaders for virtual and in-person recruitment efforts, as the plan suggests, will “bring the campus together,” McGinnis said.
To align program offerings with workforce and community needs, the university plans to expand honors programs and strengthen pathways to career placements and internships. This effort will be particularly important in fields where UH Hilo shines like health, environmental and data sciences, Hawaiian studies and sustainable agriculture, according to the plan.
Creation of academic pathways to benefit first-generation college students and other underrepresented or vulnerable student groups is another aim of the SEM Plan, as are campus infrastructure improvements like better Wi-Fi and improved disability access, along with further incorporation of Hawaiian elements.
Chancellor Bonnie Irwin said she believes that improving the landscaping, classrooms and residence halls will make a big impact on attracting new students. She said a 2019 upgrade to the library and its lanai, as well as outdoor dining improvements in 2024, are examples of how the campus was able to offer “more student activity at all hours of the day and a popular meeting space.”
Irwin said she is personally most excited about the plan for improved operational efficiency and technological integration, which includes hiring a specialized enrollment staff to work individually with students, increasing financial aid communications to entice students who may feel fiscally dissuaded from enrolling, and streamlining the transfer of credits to enhance the pathway for transfer students.
“Students should be challenged intellectually in their classes, but things like transferring credits, putting together a class schedule, and getting the support they need should not be challenging,” Irwin said. “If we can fix some of our processes, students will have an easier and ultimately more successful journey toward their degree.”
The enhanced branding and marketing of UH Hilo, which will include a revamped website and more collaboration with local media, will help to draw more students both from outside of Hawaii and from the Big Island.
“We are studying why students are not attending college in high numbers on our island,” Irwin said, explaining that local students can get the off-island experiences they seek for a semester or a year while attending their hometown university.
“Every year, we see local students who went away to college and then decided to come back. We want students to start here and, through UH Hilo, give them that experience away, either internationally or domestically,” she said.
One effort outlined in the SEM Plan that could help draw students both locally and from afar involves UH Hilo buying the contact information students can choose to release to prospective higher education institutions when they take their ACT and SAT exams.
This will allow the university to target its recruitment effort by zip code, which, coupled with the enhanced marketing campaigns and rejuvenated campus offerings, might help break the annual streak of lower enrollment.
“We need to do a better job at UH Hilo of touting what we do well: individual attention to student needs, place-based education in what is perhaps the most amazing natural learning laboratory in the world, and connections we have in the local community, both for student experiences and jobs after graduation,” Irwin said.
Email Kyveli Diener at kdiener@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
