Amid declining state financial support for universities, many schools are relying on nonresidents—and working hard to recruit them—to make ends meet
To balance their budgets, state institutions such as the University of California system have come to rely on out-of-state students, who pay far higher tuition than in-state students.
(Corrects ninth paragraph to clarify that the University of Washington is not part of a state university system.)
Colorado Mesa University was typical of most public institutions in the fall of 2007, with out-of-state students making up a small number, about 5 percent, of the overall student body. But when the economic downturn hit in the fall of 2008, and state support for higher education began dwindling, Colorado Mesa President Tim Foster knew it was time to shake up the status quo. He decided to aggressively recruit out-of-state students, who pay 50 percent to 60 percent more than do Colorado residents. “Obviously the purchasing power of in-state students from a budgetary perspective was not very good,” Foster says.
The school embedded a recruiter in California and sent additional admissions representatives to such key Western feeder states as Wyoming and Utah. The school even targeted Hawaii.
The work has paid off: This fall, out-of-state students make up 12 percent of Colorado Mesa University’s overall student body, bringing in about $3 million to $5 million in additional revenue annually. Foster’s goal is to see nonresident enrollment reach 25 percent in five years. “If we can continue to grow—but grow out-of-state faster—that will work well for us,” he says.
Colorado Mesa University’s tactics are not unusual. To counter state budget cuts, public universities from California to Ohio are courting out-of-state students and the tuition premiums they pay. To attract these students, institutions are using sophisticated recruiting techniques, embedding recruiters in feeder states, ramping up advertising campaigns, and even giving students breaks on out-of-state fees. Recruiting of nonresidents is likely to grow in the next few years as budget slashing increases. At least 25 states have made substantial cuts in funding for state colleges and universities this fall—reductions that will have a direct impact on students, according to the latest report from the Center on Budget & Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington.
The University of California system is the “poster child” for the out-of-state recruiting movement, says Donald Heller, director of the center for the Study of Higher Education at Pennsylvania State University. Heller notes that schools in the state been fairly explicit about having chosen to use nonresident students as vehicles to raise revenue. Nonresident students in California pay about three times as much in tuition and fees as residents do.
CALIFORNIA’S OUT-OF-STATE BOOM
California has reduced funding for the university system by $650 million this year and funding could be slashed a further $100 million if the state doesn’t meet its revenue projection, says UC spokesman Ricardo Vasquez. Last December, the University of California’s Commission on the Future recommended increasing the percentage of non-California residents to help cope with budget cuts. Many California schools have listened. This fall, nonresidents make up 12.3 percent of the system’s freshman class, up from 8 percent last year. The most dramatic shifts have taken place at some of the UC system’s more popular campuses, such as UC-Berkeley, where out-of-state residents and international students make up 30 percent of this year’s freshman class, up from 23 percent last year.
Despite these increases, the UC system is still far from hitting the 10 percent nonresident systemwide cap set by the system’s Board of Regents, Vasquez says. “It will take a number of years to reach that 10 percent cap, so I would imagine that the campuses would continue to look into enrolling more nonresident students in the coming years,” he says.
Notwithstanding the increased revenue that out-of-state students bring with them, the path the UC system and others are taking comes with pitfalls—the most worrisome of which may be reduced access for in-state students, says William Tierney, director of the Center for Higher Education Policy Analysis at the University of Southern California. “Most of what we’re seeing is that public institutions are not increasing enrollment,” Tierney says. “The out-of-state students are certainly qualified and meet the traditional academic criteria, but are they getting in at the expense of in-state students?”
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