Education

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) ― The Morris campus of the University of Minnesota sits on the prairie about 150 miles west of Minneapolis, 45 miles from the nearest Target Store, and far off the radar of many high school students shopping for colleges.
  
Mike Vandenberg is working to change that. He tools around the Twin Cities in a silver Toyota hybrid labeled with the words "University of Minnesota Morris," often hitting three or four high schools in a day.
  
Other schools are making similar pushes.
  
With the population dropping in rural Minnesota and other parts of the Upper Midwest, the state's rural four-year public universities are working to lure more students from the heavily populated corridor stretching from St. Cloud to the Twin Cities and Rochester -- and from out of state.
  
As they strive to fill every freshman class, schools like Morris, Minnesota-Crookston, Bemidji State and Southwest Minnesota State in Marshall have slashed their tuition for nonresidents, hired image consultants and started recruiting students as far away as Alaska.
  
Vandenberg's job as an admissions counselor is to try to get the top high school students from the Twin Cities to put Minnesota-Morris on their short list.
  
"The local school districts (around Morris) aren't getting bigger," he said. "UMM isn't someplace that's on the radar too much for many students. They just don't know anything about it. That's one of the things I'm trying to change."
  
The number of high school graduates in Minnesota is expected to decrease by 3 percent overall over the next decade, according to the University of Minnesota. The population boom in the Twin Cities suburbs and exurbs is partly offsetting a sharper decline in greater Minnesota.
  
By comparison, the number of high school graduates is expected to drop by 23 percent in North Dakota, 8 percent in South Dakota and 6 percent each in Wisconsin, Iowa and Michigan.
  
None of Minnesota's public four-year schools has experienced any serious drops in new students yet, but keeping enrollment stable or growing is becoming a bigger challenge.
  
"There's no question it's harder; the competition is tough," said Richard Shearer, director of enrollment services at Southwest Minnesota State. "In some of the smaller communities around us, we used to get 10 or 15 students (per year); now we're getting five or six."
  
For now at least, successful high school students continue to make the trek to Morris, a community of about 5,000 people. Minnesota-Morris considers its competition to be schools such as St. Olaf, Gustavus Adolphus, Luther College and top large public schools such as Wisconsin-Madison.
  
A typical Morris student graduated in the top 25 of his or her high school class and scored somewhere in the mid-to-upper 20s on the ACT.
  
"We will continue to hold that we will not sacrifice that profile for the sake of getting more numbers," said James Morales, the associate vice chancellor for enrollment at Morris.
  
The school has hired a marketing firm to examine the Minnesota-Morris brand.
  
"The recurring issue for us is visibility. It isn't what we offer," Morales said. "They don't know we're here or they hear of us and think we're part of the (Minnesota State Colleges and Universities) system."
  
Minnesota-Morris hopes to enroll 2,100 students by 2013, roughly 400 more than currently on the books. To accomplish that, it either has to become more effective at recruiting or lower its admission standards.
  
One step has been to reimburse prospective students who live more than 350 miles away up to $500 just for visiting the campus.
  
"Of the students who took advantage of that, about 60 percent enrolled," Morales said. "It helps us minimize the barriers."
  
Recruiters acknowledge the top questions they get from prospects have to do with what they'd do in Morris.
  
"I think the location can be (a liability), but I think it can also be an opportunity," Morales said. "At the national college fair, a student came up to me and asked 'What would be the biggest challenge for me?' She is from Mahtomedi. She's a top student, would be a perfect student for us. She runs cross-country, plays a musical instrument. I said to her: 'I think in your case, it would be location and here's why. A lot of students from the Twin Cities don't understand the change that it would be to come to a rural setting. But in the same breath, it's also a change."'
  
In recent years, Minnesota-Morris, Minnesota-Crookston, Southwest Minnesota State, Bemidji State and Minnesota State Moorhead started charging nonresidents the same tuition amount as residents.
  
Southwest Minnesota State -- which has seen its numbers of South Dakotans drop over the last several years -- is targeting Iowa, the Omaha area, suburban Chicago and Winnipeg, Manitoba. Minnesota-Morris has had success in Colorado and is attending college fairs in Arizona, Texas and Florida. Bemidji State is seeing an increase in the number of students from Alaska.
  
"Our football coach began recruiting some players from there," said Russel Kreager, Bemidji State's admissions director. "Right now, we've got conversations going with students (in Alaska) who are graduating in 2010. We're targeting about 900 students either in Anchorage or the Kenai Peninsula."

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