Kopp: Recruitment

More from Marshall President Stephen Kopp’s meeting with The Herald-Dispatch editorial board:

I had been doing some fact checking in recent weeks, and what I found surprised me. Marshall was losing market share to West Virginia University. In getting numbers from the Higher Education Policy Commission, which among other things functions as a statistical warehouse for the state’s institutions of higher learning, I found these trends:

-- From 2001 to 2006, even though Marshall’s total enrollment was up slightly, its share of total enrollment of state-supported schools had gone down from 24 percent to 21 percent, while WVU’s was up 40 percent to 42 percent.

-- In that same period, Marshall’s in-state enrollment was down (13,467 to 11,165) while WVU’s was up (14,117 to 15,224).

-- Among recent high schools graduates (those who graduated in spring and were enrolled in college that fall), Marshall’s numbers were down (1,446 to 1,063) while WVU’s were up (1,684 to 2,163).

Numbers for fall 2007 won’t be available for a couple more weeks.

And I learned the number of PROMISE scholars enrolled at Marshall went down from 2004 to 2007 (1,740 to 1,624) while the number at WVU was up (3,494 to 4,184).

How to explain this? One is that West Virginia high schools are graduating fewer students, and the ones in Marshall’s historically strong market area are down even more than the state average.

Kopp’s opinion? Marshall’s efforts to attract students was not good.

“The recruiting program we had was perhaps the worst I had ever seen.”

Marshall’s efforts had been focused on talking to high school seniors in a narrow geographic area. But that’s too late and too small, Kopp said. Marshall’s recruiting efforts are now going statewide and regionally. And they’re starting to work, as Marshall this year has 140 more freshmen than it did last year.

The recruitment effort is targeting high school students as early as their freshman year, before most have decided where they would prefer to go to school.

Kopp himself has visited high schools in the recruitment effort. He says he tell students to consider not just Marshall, but the entire idea of higher education. And not just to start college, but to complete it.

Once the students enroll at Marshall, the work begins to keep them. Right now about 47 percent of people who start Marshall as freshmen are around for their sophomore year, Kopp said. The school’s goal is 60 percent. That’s far below the 92 percent that Ohio State claims, but Marshall has a disadvantage. More than half of Marshall students are first-generation college students. That is, they are the first in their families to attend college. That puts them at a disadvantage in making it through to their second year, Kopp said.

The Sunday editorial will deal with this topic some more.