The University of Missouri at Columbia is feeling the aftershocks of last fall’s protests in its enrollment figures.
Projected enrollment for this fall is down by about 900 students, about 15 percent fewer than last year’s figures, said Barbara Rupp, the university’s interim vice provost for enrollment management. Count transfers and graduate students, and the enrollment decline grows to about 1,500, she said. Ms. Rupp said it’s too soon to tell how the racial and income characteristics of the fall class will differ.
The student shortfall has set off alarm bells on the campus, where the interim chancellor has warned of steep budget cuts because of the loss of tuition dollars.
Ms. Rupp said there was no doubt that the fall protests and the resulting negative news-media coverage had contributed to the decline. “It’s a pretty conservative state, so there are some people who are not at all happy about what happened here,” she said.
For nonresidents, the barrage of media coverage created the image of a campus “literally falling apart,” Ms. Rupp said. But the question is how much those events drove away potential students.
The university was already expecting fewer students for the 2016-17 academic year, Ms. Rupp said. And the number of first-time, full-time freshmen last fall was 300 fewer than the previous fall, she explained.
One reason is that Missouri, like a lot of Midwestern states, is experiencing a decline in high-school graduates. Since 2010 the number of in-state students who enroll as freshmen at Mizzou has dropped by more than 14 percent, from 4,369 to 3,747, according to figures from the university system.
To make up for that trend, the university has been aggressively recruiting in several metropolitan areas, setting up year-round operations in places like Chicago, Dallas, Denver, and Minneapolis, Ms. Rupp said. Those efforts paid off initially. Mizzou saw a 42-percent increase in nonresident freshman enrollment from 2010 to 2015 — rising from 1,720 to 2,447, the system’s figures show.
Students from out of state not only lifted enrollment, Ms. Rupp said. They also helped to increase the university’s racial diversity. Since 2010 there has been a 23-percent increase in black students at the university, and a nearly 54-percent increase in Hispanic students, according to a Chronicle analysis of figures from the system.
But competition from other universities has grown, especially since the university joined the Southeastern Conference in athletics, Ms. Rupp said.
There is still time to reduce the enrollment shortfall, and Mizzou officials are using several tactics to assure prospective students and their parents that the university is both safe and welcoming. Some faculty members and students have been attending events for admitted students in the big cities where Mizzou recruits, Ms. Rupp said, and faculty members are also writing personal emails to admitted students, encouraging them to enroll.
One bright spot for the university, Ms. Rupp said, is an increase in the number of “high ability” students — those with ACT scores of 33 or above.
“As much as possible, we’re urging people to come and visit the campus,” she said. “I don’t know how much we can move the mark, but every little bit helps.”
Correction (3/18/2016, 5:12 p.m.): This article originally misstated the proportion by which the university expects its fall enrollment to decline. It is about 15 percent, not nearly a quarter. The article has been updated to reflect this correction.
Eric Kelderman writes about money and accountability in higher education, including such areas as state policy, accreditation, and legal affairs. You can find him on Twitter @etkeld, or email him at eric.kelderman@chronicle.com.
