Ross Allen, President, Bethel University

Ross Allen, president of Bethel University, spoke to Invest: about the consistent growth seen by the school in recent years. He also noted new measures regarding programs with high-school students and with tuition repositioning and scholarships.

What have been some of the main highlights and key milestones for Bethel University in the last 12 months? 

A lot has happened in the last 12 months. I’m just starting my fifth year, and we have been in the process of bringing our financial situation to a good position. We’ve invested in areas of opportunity, and those investments are paying off and resulting in increased enrollment. 

In addition to the traditional undergrad, we have a strong dual enrollment, which is high-school students who work towards college degrees at the same time. Minnesota provides strong support for that. We have increased our investment in that area. We’ve also increased our investment in healthcare programs and we’ve seen growth in those programs as well, particularly our physicians assistant program. Our PA program is in high demand.

To have our financial position in a much better spot and to have programs growing and enrollment growing are good things. We’ve also had the benefit of some great donations and generosity from those who care and are passionate about Bethel University. It has been a good year in so many ways. That then results in a positive and improving organizational dynamic and morale, and a healthier and thriving organizational culture. 

To what do you attribute that increase in demand from students in recent years? 

My background is in large organizations. I spent 20 years in acquisitions, integrations, and crisis management, and those 20 years helped me realize that you need to be clear about your mission. What is it you bring as an organization? For us, we focused a lot on what makes us distinctive. What is the unique role that Bethel plays? Then we made sure that we were clear about that in our messaging and carrying that out as a midsize university that is faith-based. We clearly have that as the core of what we are, and we make that clear in all our activities. That I think is core and perhaps most critical. 

How is the university expanding its programs to attract more students?

We have expanded our programs. We assessed and evaluated students’ interests and then ensured that that was where we were putting our emphasis and our priorities. We pulled back in some areas that students had less interest in so that we could invest in areas that they showed more interest in. As an example, we saw interest in families wanting their kids to be able to start their higher education earlier through dual enrollment. We adapted our dual enrollment program to be more flexible to meet students and families’ desires and expectations. Previously, we required that these students be on campus taking full-time classes and only as high-school seniors. It was restricted. As we heard from families about this, we decided to open that up. We did a pilot on juniors and found that the junior students did well academically. We also saw that we could support them well.

We learned during the pandemic that we can do online very well, so we added post-secondary online. We also realized that students have the desire to keep some activities in high school and some in college, and so we’ve adapted and have been flexible on working around their schedules. We don’t use the term customer in higher ed, but it’s really a customer-focused or a student-centric approach to how we meet the needs that they’re looking for. I would say that has been a core factor in our growth. 

How will you ensure that growth continues? 

We have just recently announced a tuition repositioning. In higher ed pricing, the average discount now is 56%. These are scholarships, and as I found out, everyone gets a scholarship, and everyone gets a large scholarship. The system over the last several decades has gotten to a point where the gross or the list price is extremely inflated at a 56% discount. If you do the math, that’s about 125% gross up that is then packaged with state and federal aid. That aid also takes a long time to get because you need to wait on federal processes. We’ve decided to eliminate these feel-good discounts or feel-good scholarships, as we call them. Instead of starting with that higher price, we’ve moved our list price from $44,000 to $25,990 and we’ve eliminated that feel-good discount. We still have some academic scholarships available that reduce tuition if you have a good high school GPA, for example, but we’ve decided to be clear and transparent. We’re a private higher ed institution, and we recognize that we’re not low-cost. Higher ed is still expensive, we recognize that, but we want to be clear and transparent and help the students and their families make a decision.

We were not the first to do that across the United States. Some other universities have done this over the last decade or so, and we’ve watched them and assessed them. We’ve spent a lot of time analyzing this. Over the last year or so, we’ve had a task force working on this. We did a lot of financial analysis on what the price should be. How do we message that? How do we communicate that? We’ve talked with outside experts, both on the marketing side and on the analysis side. The response has been absolutely phenomenal. We’ve gotten the message out there. And I think the message is clear and transparent. 

Where would you like to see the university in three or four years?

It isn’t lost on me that a significant number of schools are closing. Many of those are smaller, but not always. I recognize that higher ed is under tremendous transition and disruption. In my view, given my experience, when there is a crisis there is opportunity. What we’ve seen in the last few years is that when you invest in opportunities, when you are clear about your mission, and you perform with excellence, you see the benefit of that. For us, it’s great to see the progress we’ve made.

We’re excited about the future. I look forward to us becoming even healthier organizationally, financially, and in terms of enrollment, and to have more students become interested in having the Bethel experience. We will continue to partner closely with communities, whether that’s in healthcare, business, or other spaces we can emphasize to ensure we’re meeting the needs locally and that we do that really well.  Overall, I look forward to continuing to improve.