Before the sun rises next Friday, groups of Ohio high school students from Cincinnati, Cleveland and Dayton will board buses headed north.
Their destination: Ypsilanti, Michigan, home of Eastern Michigan University.
They’re heading to a prospective student event aimed specifically at those who will be the first ones in their families to earn a four-year degree.
It’ll be a busy day. Students will check out the campus, learn about available academic supports, and attend info sessions with admissions staff. Then, by 2:30 p.m., they’ll return to the buses, cross the state line and head home.
Eastern Michigan does at least two of these bus tours per year, including to Michigan, Illinois and Pennsylvania. Clarissa Russell, Eastern Michigan’s associate director of Regional Recruitment and Diversity Initiatives, categorizes these events as being “extremely” successful.
“If I had unlimited resources, certainly I would have more trips more often,” she said. “But in a world of limited budgets, we have to be strategic.”
These interstate bus tours are an example of how some schools are going beyond state borders to boost recruitment. It also sheds light on how challenging the enrollment environment is for many four-year public universities nationwide — including those here in Ohio.
Eastern Michigan pitches location, no out-of-state fees to Ohio students
The reasoning behind this trip, like so many things in higher education, is targeted.
Russell said there’s already interest from students. It also offers a chance to cement relationships with surrounding high school districts — especially because “they’ve been talking us up in these areas,” she said.
Eastern Michigan doesn’t have any out-of-state tuition rates. The current sticker price for a semester comes in at about $8,000, and most students don’t pay the full listed rates at any college.
Still, the majority of America’s undergraduates attend college close to home. One estimate finds most enroll at an institution within 17 miles of where they live.
Eastern Michigan, of course, is farther than that. Ypsilanti is a few hours away from the Ohio cities it is recruiting from. To Russell, those few hundred miles are a selling point.
“It’s close enough to say, ‘oh, somebody can come pick me up for the weekend and it wouldn’t be a problem,’… or it’s far enough away to say, ‘yeah, I go out of state’ and sound like it’s oh-so-far,”she said.
On paper, Eastern Michigan looks similar to colleges in Ohio such as Cleveland State University and the University of Toledo. Each belongs to a category called regional public universities. They’re important institutions, powering local economies with their graduates and serving as major employers themselves.
Yet this sector — including more than 10 Ohio — has been hit particularly hard by recent enrollment declines. It’s all resulted in what Russell acknowledged is a “very competitive” landscape for institutions.
How some Ohio institutions play a similar recruiting game
Eastern Michigan has long relied on Ohio for students. In 2012, federal data shows more than 320 students in their first-year class came from Ohio. That means one out of every eight new freshmen came from Ohio.
But the number dropped to 97 — or about 4% of that fall’s new class — 10 years later.
The university in Ypsilanti isn’t the only institution looking to serve students from different states.
Northeast Ohio’s Youngstown State relies on students from Pennsylvania. Federal data shows the number of students from the Keystone State consistently clocked in at around 11% for a decade despite overall enrollment declines.
Students from Monroe County, Michigan, attending the University of Toledo pay in-state tuition plus a $1 out-of-state surcharge each semester. In Southern Ohio, Shawnee State has seen its proportion of students from Kentucky double over the past 20 years.
And, as Signal Statewide reported last month, Kent State University is looking to hire a director of national recruitment to get more students to campus.
It all makes one thing clear: Regional publics often serve regions that don’t “necessarily abide by state borders,” according to Cecilia Orphan. She’s an associate professor of higher education at the University of Denver as well as a founding co-director of the Alliance for Research on Regional Colleges.
More intentional pushes could help students. For those whom regional publics tend to enroll higher percentages of – including students of color and first-generation students – targeted attention can make a big difference.
“It feels good to be recruited that intentionally,” Orphan said. “That could be really influential to get students to go to college.”
How these visits could impact Cleveland State, Wright State
Between institutions, though, things could become less rosy. This intentional recruiting could create implications for the “other regional publics they’re recruiting in the backyard of,” Orphan said.
In the past, Orphan said these types of colleges didn’t have to be super proactive with recruitment. They could just typically reach out to those living nearby. Now that’s changed, in part because states are dealing with declining demographics and changing perceptions about higher education.
This trip, Eastern Michigan’s buses are pulling into cities near Wright State and Cleveland State. Federal data shows neither of these regional publics have large out-of-Ohio populations.
Orphan categorized those two institutions as “two very innovative regional publics that have experienced enrollment pressures.”
She’s sure that those schools have done the work to formalize their own recruitment efforts. But still, she’d be nervous if she were sitting in those recruitment offices in the Buckeye State, “especially because there’s no real policy-maker intervention.”
“I think the onus is on Cleveland State and Wright State to recognize this is happening and really make their pitch to students,” she said.
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