MSU revamps plan to ‘fight’ for more students

Missouri State University has developed a new playbook to recruit students.

Dawn Medley, vice president for enrollment management, told the MSU Board of Governors that the existing model for engaging students was outdated.

“There was nothing wrong with the strategy that had been built before. There was nothing wrong with the way they were executing that strategy,” she said Aug. 7 at a board retreat. “However, the strategy no longer matched the market.”

MSU set a goal in its new strategic plan to reach an overall enrollment of at least 30,000 students by 2030.

“Getting there will take more than recruiting a larger freshman class. Our strategy includes first-time students, transfers, graduate students, international students, adult learners and online students,” said MSU President Richard “Biff” Williams, in an Aug. 11 blog about the meeting. “It also means focusing on retention, student satisfaction, scholarships, the campus visit experience, and programs students want and employers need.”

The university reported a total of 27,235 students, up from 26,874, last fall. The student number for the Springfield campus was up slightly at 25,238, despite a drop in international and graduate students.

Medley said there is no longer a surplus of high school students because of a demographic cliff created by families having fewer children during the Great Recession nearly two decades ago.

“Missouri State never really had to be kind of cutthroat in their recruitment strategy or really be out in the market,” she said.

With fierce competition for recent graduates, Medley said MSU must cast a wider net and not rely on its 50 primary feeder high schools and other established pipelines to find students.

“We need to be at every college fair in the state of Missouri,” she said, adding travel will include northwest Arkansas, the Kansas City area and major cities including Tulsa and Dallas.

Medley said given the challenges, her goal is “to be flat on first-time students” and gain ground in other areas.

“It’s going to just continue to be a fight; that is what we’re going to have to do for students,” she said. “I do not think every institution in the U.S. is going to survive.”

She said MSU has long positioned itself as an affordable option for students with high financial need.

“We do not want to walk away from that access mission, but we also need to expand our mission overall and what we’re doing,” she said.

Medley said the strategic reset has included revamping the admissions team, forging partnerships with athletics and marketing, expanding travel for recruiting and revamping the way prospective students visit campus.

She said affordability, while still a priority, may not be the primary concern for families in some out-of-state markets.

“Many of them are looking at do we have good football weekends, do we have active Greek life, do we have 300-plus campus organizations,” she said. “We want to make sure we’re appealing to those students.”

To protect limited funding, Medley said her staff is working more diligently to find and eliminate “ghost” applications and reduce fraud.

“There are fake people stealing identities, applying for admission, getting admitted and then filing fake applications for federal student aid. We are paying that out,” she said. “Then, when we track those folks down, and we know that they are fake, we have to pay that money back to the federal government.”

Medley said due to the intense competition among institutions for students, MSU will not post its recruitment plan online. Instead, a series of customized playbooks have been developed and will be given to employees based on their role in boosting enrollment.

“You can still have a team effort and a team focus, even if you don’t know all the components or have all the parts,” she said.

Jeremy Dickerson, assistant vice president for enrollment management, said there is reason for ongoing optimism. He noted there are 41,000 prospective students asking for information about MSU this year, compared to 25,000 at the same time a year ago.

“We are seeing real measurable effects of the strategies that Dawn has led over the past year,” he said.