 "Photo: Information courtesy of the UT Office of Institutional Research")
From the University of Hawaii to Boise State University in Idaho and Indiana University South Bend, universities across the United States have been experiencing an increase in enrollment.
For eight straight semesters, the University of Toledo has found itself among those American universities with growing student populations.
On Jan. 25, the Office of Institutional Research at UT released the Spring 2010 Enrollment report, which revealed that UT’s combined headcount enrollment for undergraduates and graduate students increased by 3.9 percent, from 20,776 to 21,594. This means that 818 more students enrolled at UT from Fall 2009 to Spring 2010.
The student population, however, is not made up of full-time students only. According to the Vice President of Enrollment Services Kevin Kucera, UT lumps together the part-time students and full-time students to derive a Full-Time Equivalency.
“We’re taking all these three-hour students and six-hour students and translating them into a full-time student,” Kucera said.
UT’s FTE has increased by 5.7 percent since last year, accounting for a total of 18,583 students, which is comprised of 14,680 FTE undergraduates and 3,904 FTE graduates. UT determines the FTE by dividing the total number of credit hours taken at the university by 15.
According to Larry Burns, vice president for external affairs and interim vice president for equity and diversity, UT’s enrollment successes over the past eight semesters have come from the collaborative efforts of the upper-level administrators at UT to develop a “very well-thought out strategy to increase enrollment.”
Burns said UT’s strategy to increase enrollment is based on “several key factors.” These factors include developing creative marketing methods, making UT affordable for all students and keeping faculty informed about the changes in marketing strategies.
As state higher education budgets continue to dwindle, many public universities have begun to rely on a business model to create a “brand” through innovative marketing strategies. That is why UT is operating a marketing initiative based on the word “more,” which, according to Burns, is supposed to spread the message that UT has “more scholarships, more degrees, more athletic events, more social events.”
“The reality of an institution like ours is that we receive a remarkably small amount of our funding from the state,” Burns said. “The only way we are going to thrive is if we’re financially viable and successful, so if that’s a business then we’re a business.”
According to Burns, UT must rely on “integrated marketing,” which involves “using advertising, social media, public relations and all communications to say the same message,” to increase enrollment. Burns said his office uses these integrated marketing techniques to communicate to potential students that UT is “an institution of opportunity.”
“What makes us such a special place, in my opinion, is that we’re a place for just about anyone,” he said. “If you are academically gifted and want to pursue medicine, law, pharmacy, engineering, you will be with the best and brightest and most prepared students.”
However, Burns said he believes that carrying that message of “opportunity” and “more” to neighboring communities and cities in Ohio and southeast Michigan is what will increase name recognition for UT. Beginning in 2006-2007, his office implemented long-term advertising campaigns in areas of Detroit, Cleveland and Columbus. While UT has traditionally drawn students from Ohio’s major cities and towns, due to the affordability of in-state tuition costs, the Detroit campaign has also proven successful, Burns said.
“Since we’ve started this program, we’ve tripled [the number of Michigan students from non-Monroe county areas]. We believe it’s working, but we also believe wholeheartedly that we’re still in the early stages of that, because it’s about name recognition, it’s about location recognition,” he said.
Burns said he believes there are challenges in attracting students from Detroit.
“Still, to many Detroiters, we’re much farther away than an hour. For some reason, that state line is a mental barrier,” he said.
Detroit is not the only out-of-state market UT is pursuing. Burns and Kucera expressed interest in pursuing areas of western Pennsylvania, particularly the Pittsburgh metropolitan area. But it is unlikely UT will pursue a marketing campaign in Pittsburgh anytime soon.
“We really want to fully develop our pool from Detroit before we take that next venture into Pennsylvania,” Kucera said. “So we’d like to see even more students from the Detroit-suburban area consider UT, and we’re going to see that this fall again.”
When deciding on ways to bring in more students, UT administrators decided increasing the budgeted scholarship share would help accomplish their goal.
“A big decision that Kevin [Kucera] recommended, that the senior administration accepted, was to increase our scholarship budget so that we’re offering more scholarship opportunities to more people and broadening the scope of how we do that,” Burns said.
Kucera said making UT affordable through “creative financial aid programs” will ensure higher enrollment figures.
One creative scholarship program that UT has started is the Blue and Gold Scholar program — formerly the UT Guarantee — which has brought in over 400 students with 3.0 GPAs and higher, from Ohio’s 22 poorest urban school districts. So far, the program has proven successful with 84.3 percent retention rate among the scholarship recipients.
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