Market Forces.

• Author: LEWERS, CHRISTINE

Indiana colleges take a businesslike approach to changes in the marketplace.

Twelve years ago the last thing Steve Cramer expected was another school to call him for advice.

"To say we were struggling was to put it mildly," says Cramer, vice president for institutional advancement at Bethel College in Mishawaka, recalling the school's dismal spring of 1988 when enrollment dipped to its lowest level in many years and the school found itself over its head in debt.

Since then, Bethel College has increased its enrollment from fewer than 400 students to about 1,700 and its budget has shot up from $2.7 million to just over $20 million. But most of all, says Cramer, there is a renewed enthusiasm and spiritual fervor on campus that has prospective students taking notice.

It also has other schools asking Cramer how Bethel went from the brink of closure to a national success story other Christian liberal arts colleges seek to emulate.

Even though enrollment rose 18 percent at Indiana's private schools and about 7 percent at the state's public universities from 1990 to 1998, the past decade has been challenging for Bethel and other Indiana colleges, say education professionals throughout the state. Cuts in funding, shifting demographics and new technologies have dramatically changed the face of higher education.

Indiana colleges, including Bethel, have responded to these forces much like businesses respond to a changing marketplace. Schools have clarified their missions and defined their niches in an increasingly competitive field. Many are tailoring programs to meet the needs of working adults and partnering with businesses to ensure graduates have the skills employers are demanding.

And all schools have begun looking at students as customers. In the process they have retooled student services, how courses are delivered and how they market themselves. For some schools the starting point was deciding what role to play in the next millennium.

For example, University of Evansville President James Vinson credits his college's turnaround to a campus-wide effort to refocus the school's mission. By deciding just what kind of school UE should be, the campus began to emphasize its liberal-arts undergraduate education and selected professional programs. It also began to recast itself as a residential campus that recruits nationally.

In 10 years the school came back from a $3 million deficit to boast a $1 million operating surplus and a $50.9 million endowment today. Education Securities, a subsidiary of Sallie Mae, chose UE from among hundreds of schools for a 1997 national case study about effective ways to serve students at less cost.

Perhaps the largest force affecting Indiana's schools in the past decade is the shrinking availability of federal, state and private funds, says Christopher Simpson, vice president of public...