Rural Colleges Make the Most of ‘Off the Beaten Path’ Locations

After enrollment at Northern Michigan University plummeted by almost 20 percent over four years, the president of the rural public institution on the shore of Lake Superior decided it was time to start taking risks.

So in 2016, when a chemistry professor came up with the “crazy idea” of creating the nation’s first four-year degree focusing on marijuana, President Fritz Erickson said, Why not? And when the provost suggested, a little while later, that the college take advantage of its chilly location and open a “body farm” to study how humans decompose, the president said sure.

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Two years later, freshman enrollment has rebounded, reaching numbers not seen since 2013. The marijuana program, called Medicinal Plant Chemistry, which Erickson emphasizes is “not a stoner’s degree” but a “hard-core chemistry degree,” has grown to almost 200 students in a single year, up from 27 initially. The forensic-anthropology body farm, the first created in a cold climate, has led to collaborations with medical schools, law enforcement, and even the FBI.

Promoting distinctive programs is one way that rural colleges are attracting students and faculty members at a time when the number of high-school graduates is falling, particularly in the Upper Midwest and Northeast. Much of New England, along with Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, face projected declines of 5 percent or more from the 2012-13 to the 2025-26 academic years, according to the U.S. Education Department.

Getting people from urban and suburban areas to consider a rural college can be challenging. Many have preconceived notions about rural America, and they don’t want to give up the conveniences — or culture — of city life.

Colleges located in regions where the politics and culture skew more conservative can face additional recruiting challenges. Students and faculty members with views tending toward the liberal can be uncomfortable moving to a conservative area, even if the campus culture is more liberal.

“Stereotypes outside the state are so strong,” says William M. (Bill) Tsutsui, president of Hendrix College, in Arkansas, says in an email. “I expect there may be a good bit of ‘self-selection’ among those who apply for jobs or admission.”

Rural colleges offer many advantages, among them safety and spectacular scenery. And these days, they’re not shy about promoting them. Colleges like Northern Michigan now use location as a marketing tool, capable of drawing students and faculty members who seek a sense of community, affordable living, and outdoor adventure.

Northern Michigan’s brochures show students skiing, ice climbing, mountain climbing. “So many college materials, you could just change the name on the cover,” says Erickson. “Ours are very specific to our sense of place. We market a lifestyle.”

“We’ve decided to embrace who we are.”

How to Make Location Count

Here are seven tactics that rural colleges can use to recruit students and faculty members.

Differentiate: Many colleges capitalize on their natural surroundings, creating signature programs in fields like oceanography, wildlife rehabilitation, or outdoor-adventure management.

Others distinguish themselves with unusual extracurriculars. Paul Smith’s College, which was built on the footprint of an 1859 wilderness hotel deep in New York’s Adirondacks region, boasts teams of bass fishermen, woodsmen, and marathon canoers. Schreiner University, in south-central Texas, offers e-gaming as a sports program.

Eastern Kentucky University, in the Appalachian foothills 25 miles from the University of Kentucky, doesn’t try to compete with its larger neighbor. It has carved out its own niche, offering the only bachelor’s degree in aviation in the state, along with popular programs in fire safety, forensic science, and criminal justice.

“My mother used to say there are two things in life you can’t change: genes and geography, and geography is something we’ve learned to accept,” says Michael T. Benson, the college’s president.

Collaborate: Small colleges often pool resources to attract students and faculty members. In western Massachusetts, the long-established Five College Consortium — Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, and Smith Colleges, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst — offers students access to classes taught by more than 2,200 professors, along with hundreds of social and cultural events. Faculty members can make use of one another’s research facilities and can teach across campuses through joint appointments. A free shuttle bus connects the campuses, none of which is more than a 20-minute drive from the others.

In Oregon, an Urban-Rural Ambassadors program gives students at Eastern Oregon University and Portland State University the chance to spend a week on each other’s campuses, learning how to collaborate across the state’s rural-urban divide.

Play up the quality of life: Grinnell College reminds prospective faculty members that their salary will go further in rural Iowa than it would in a city, says Mark Peltz, dean for careers, life, and service.

Erickson, at Northern Michigan, tells job candidates that “the only traffic problem we have is on the trails,” where cyclists compete for space with runners, skiers, and baby strollers.

Hendrix College assures them that “in Arkansas, people have time for each other. Relationships still matter,” says Tsutsui.

Alfred University, in upstate New York, promises students “time to identify your passion,” says Mark A. Zupan, the college’s president. “There aren’t the distractions you’d find in the big city.”

The University of Rhode Island lures students with an ample supply of affordable, off-season beach-house rentals. Marketing materials highlight the safety, beauty, and serenity of the college’s coastal location. But there’s one word you won’t find in Rhode Island’s brochures: rural. For some people, the word has negative connotations, explains Cynthia Bonn, dean of admissions. “Instead we talk about space — space to breathe, to be comfortable, to be safe.”

Challenge assumptions: Students who come from cities often associate rural America with boredom and a lack of opportunity. So when students visit the State University of New York College at Geneseo, officials show them the adjacent downtown, with its 60 businesses, and talk about the students who work, shop, and eat in town, says Meaghan L. Arena, vice president for enrollment management.

Grinnell points out the dozens of local nonprofit groups with which students can work on such global issues as food insecurity, water quality, and animal rights. “If you’re from DC or LA, you might not think those opportunities exist here,” says Peltz.

The trick, says Tsutsui, Hendrix’s president, is to get prospective students and faculty members to visit the campus. Conway, Ark., isn’t all that rural — it’s an exurb of Little Rock — but outsiders “still assume we’re hillbillies,” he says.

“The stereotypes can be so strong (and so far off-target) that a visit usually leads to an epiphany: Arkansas is actually a great place to live, work and study,” he says via email.

“Like everywhere else right now, there are strong differences of political opinion here, which may surprise some from the coasts,” Tsutsui adds, “but beneath some pretty bright-red voting patterns recently, Arkansas remains the home state of J. William Fulbright and Bill Clinton.”

Make a joke: A little self-effacing humor can’t hurt. Grinnell’s vice president for enrollment, Joseph Bagnoli Jr., often jokes that the college is “conveniently located halfway between New York City and Los Angeles.” (The catchphrase has made it onto a T-shirt sold in the college bookstore.)

Zupan, of Alfred, claims that Alfred, N.Y., is the only town “where there are more higher-ed institutions than stoplights.” (For the record: one stoplight and two colleges — Alfred University and Alfred State.)

Tsutsui quips in an email that “there isn’t a 17-year-old in America who wakes up every morning saying, ‘I want to go to college in ARKANSAS!’ "

Own it: A growing number of rural colleges are choosing to highlight location rather than downplay it. Whitman College, in Walla Walla, Wash., recently updated its mission statement accordingly. The old statement made no mention of the college’s location; the new one opens this way: “Situated within the rich and complex landscape and history of the Walla Walla Valley. … “

Eastern Oregon, which is amid several national forests, just got the state legislature to designate it “Oregon’s Rural University.” Timothy Seydel, vice president for university advancement, says the designation is “about recognizing who we are and playing to our strengths.”

In the past, “we saw our location as a real detriment,” he says. Now “we’ve started seeing it as a strength.”

Find the fit: Most rural colleges will acknowledge that they’re not for everyone. Students seeking high-rises and public transportation should look elsewhere.

Likewise, if a faculty member craves anonymity, “this isn’t the right place for them,” says Peltz, of Grinnell.

Paul Smith’s College challenges prospective students to consider whether they have the creativity, self-reliance, and sense of adventure needed to survive Adirondack winters “deep in the mountains with extreme weather and no Starbucks,” says Shannon Oborne, chief marketing officer. The college calls that essential quality “Smitty Spirit.”

“We promote in our marketing that ‘living and learning here requires a special kind of student,’ " she says.

The key in recruiting students or faculty members, says Thomas A. Insko, Eastern Oregon’s president, is: “You target people who are looking for quality of life.”

One more piece of advice for recruiting faculty members: Don’t forget the spouse. “We need to make sure the spouse or significant other knows what they’re getting into,” says Zupan. “Because if they’re not happy, you generally lose the faculty member.”