<p>This might be good news for out of state students looking for a place:</p>
<p>Michigan</a> colleges struggle to attract students | The Detroit News</p>
<p>It’s happening all over the country. The larger, flagship universities aren’t hurting, but the smaller state U’s are, same thing in PA. See this thread -</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1532481-recovering-economy-decline-college-enrollment.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1532481-recovering-economy-decline-college-enrollment.html</a></p>
<p>The northeast quadrant of the US is seeing decreasing numbers of high school students. At the same time, many part-time older adult students have shifted to online classes, because it fits better into their schedules. That is why many colleges in the northeast are increasing marketing efforts for students from other parts of the US.</p>
<p>the number of high school grads peaked a couple of years ago…</p>
<p>This will be a real problem for some states. How do you close a public U in a small city??</p>
<p>Eastern is barely a university at all (by a notable lack of PhD programs). I’m not surprised that schools like Eastern are having trouble attracting students. In the area WCC is a nicer place to go for a much lower price. Eastern’s only attraction is that it is a low cost place to get a bachelors degree after CC. That’s the only real attraction. There is no reason why anyone should go there from out of state.</p>
<p>Central is more or less the same. It’s probably not as bad as Eastern but close.</p>
<p>Very few of the smaller directional publics have what it takes to attract OOS students unless they only charge them instate rates. Even then…why?? I think NY, WI, OH and a few others with large numbers of low tier publics in random small cities will face the same problems. States that just have a few major publics like Kansas and will be much better off. Much easier to attract kids from OOS to a school like KU.</p>
<p>I got my BS from Central many years ago.Granted it’s not U of M but they have recently started a medical school. So that may bring in more students.</p>
<p>I agree that Eastern isn’t much to write home about these days… But I love how they only mentioned TWO state colleges. Other state colleges don’t seem to be mentioned, like Grand Valley, Ferris, Oakland, Wayne, Kettering, U of M Dearborn/Flint, etc. </p>
<p>I don’t attend all of them, but from what I hear, they’re all doing fine. (except Wayne since they had to raise tuition by almost 10 percent and is now in a bankrupt city)</p>
<p>*3 (cmu, wmu, emu)</p>
<p>I hope schools begin to lower cost and reduce useless programs, wasteful spending, bureaucracy and overpaid educators.</p>
<p>(Kettering is private … and my alma mater!)</p>
<p>I don’t think CMU is all that expensive (in terms of what colleges cost). I do think, though, that many Michigan families are opting for CC and for commuter colleges - more than they did in the past. I have seen it all around me. My son goes to Oakland U … the article doesn’t bother to point out that OU has experienced tremendous growth in the past few years (yes, at the undergrad level). Some schools have experienced a decline in enrollment, while others have seen an increase. UM’s increase is fueled by OOS students … but UM and MSU would probably be the last to see a big slide in enrollment simply because they are the “big” state schools.</p>
<p>WSU has struggled to maintain enrollment the last couple years, but it has nothing to do with being in Detroit (the campus is nice). I think it has more to do with many of the students they would traditionally draw from opting for CC rather than starting out at WSU. That is just a guess … WSU does not get bad press.</p>
<p>We are from Virginia and looked at OOS colleges in the midwest. I have many relatives who went to Central Michigan, MSU, UM. A year ago anyway, Central was giving in-state tuition to oos students with an unweighted gpa of 2.7. Very attractive option for the right student. Unfortunately the real problem, for oos, was no reliable transportation from an airport. Son is very happy at Ohio University, which although is 90mins from Columbus Airport, the U provides students with airport transportation ~ when I say “provides” it’s not a free service, we pay for the service. Having the assurance that an oos student can get to campus is worth the expense. And a feature that many universities (foolishly) overlook when they try to recruit oos.</p>
<p>Most likely the author only talked to the colleges that were down but the impression left is that all of the Michigan colleges are struggling to fill beds and seats. I’m not sure that is true. </p>
<p>Central’s cost of attendance is $20,000 which is roughly equal to GVSU and Western and I’m assuming Eastern and Wayne. I’m not sure you can convince many kids outside of the Detroit suburbs to go to Wayne State or Eastern unless there is a major athletic scholarship or some such thing so the state gets alittle divided up and the population is growing on the western and northern regions of the state which is turf for GVSU and Western, while the population is declining in the Detroit metro area. The flagships, of course, have been full for the past couple years so in my opinion everything should settle down as the organizations adjust for the declining teenage population. This is cyclical and occurred with the baby boom generation.</p>
<p>In my experience the kids also have “favorites”…when my oldest went to high school a whole bunch of kids (in the area) were heading to Central, when number two went through a couple years ago they were all heading to Western…so there is some typical fan/kid type behavior that occurs within the high school populations. You see it on these forums…where certain LACs are “hot” for a few years and then it’s on to another bunch when there really are no huge differences, just human nature following trends.</p>
<p>^^^Why say the author “most likely” “only” talked to universities that are down?</p>
<p>This is really a general statement because I see this done by so many people. People either cherry pick studies they like and generalize them to say things that agree with their preconceived notions or people readily discount studies they disagree with and throw out assumptions with no basis in fact or truth.</p>
<p>Both of these practices are anti intellectual and needs to stop. Every study has weaknesses. We should more closely examine what a study says and stop extrapolating out things that it doesn’t say.</p>
<p>Just venting.</p>
<p>When I was looking for a college, EMU was touted in my circle as a practical choice for people who wanted to be teachers. They were supposed to be a good school for teaching, and a school you could afford on a teacher’s salary. I don’t know if that’s true. It’s the school closest to me, and where almost everyone I knew went. Everyone I know except one person was happy there. I was desperate not to go there for a multitude of reasons, but the main reason was the crime, not the academics-- though the two are probably just as bad. The campus itself, apart from the crime, is fairly nice. I spent a lot of time there and it was pretty if you felt safe being outside at the time.</p>
<p>I can’t help but wonder if these schools are having some of their issues because their target student is an average middle class student, and the average middle class student probably doesn’t qualify for much need based aid at these schools, and the average middle class Michigan family would struggle mightily with being full pay even at these schools. I went to community college first so even though I went to UofM, Eastern/Central/Western had no merit aid to offer me, and with a COA of approx 20k to UofMs 25k, the directionals were not very competitive. I wasn’t competitive for merit aid at the directionals as a freshman applicant. So, these schools really didn’t stand much of a chance with me.</p>
<p>If I hadn’t gotten into UofM, I would have gone to GVSU or Northern. I loved Northern. I might have commuted to UofM Dearborn or Oakland, too-- which is what I probably ought to have done.</p>
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<p>Because most news has bias of one sort of another. If the author is going to title an article “Michigan Colleges Struggle to Find Students” then the author needs examples to back up the premise of the article. The author did not write a headline “Some Michigan Colleges Struggle to Find Students” which is probably a more accurate title since MSU and UofM have kids waiting to get in and I’m guessing if all Michigan 4-year institutions were exampled, that GVSU might be in the same situation (not struggling) maybe Michigan Tech, but I don’t know much about Michigan Tech.</p>
<p>This is just my observation with DS being accepted at a number of colleges last year. Some colleges are proactive and send or email lots of info to accepted students. Others seem to hardily send anything at all. DS really liked Michigan Tech and it was in his top 3 but it was just too far away from Georgia. They sent a lot of information to him. On the other hand Central which DS applied to because we are alumni … didn’t send much info at all. I have to wonder if one of the reasons Central’s enrollment is down is due to lack of communication to admitted students.</p>
<p>I don’t think any informed readers thought of UM and MSU as being among the impacted colleges. You don’t want a headline with 20 words and qualifiers.</p>
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<p>In fairness to the author of the article, it’s extremely unlikely that she wrote the headline. That’s done by an editor or headline writer after the reporter files the story and an editorial decision is made to run it. The headline is chosen with an eye toward economy/brevity, clarity, fidelity to the content of the story, and catchiness, to attract readers. </p>
<p>This isn’t the greatest headline in the history of journalism, but it’s not bad. I don’t think anyone would read it and think the claim is that “all” Michigan colleges are struggling; it doesn’t say that, and in the body of the story it clearly states that Michigan and Michigan State “are not feeling the pinch, in part because they are so competitive.” So I don’t think the article can fairly be called one-sided. It might be criticized for being incomplete, however, because it gives the reader no inkling as to what is happening at Michigan’s 8 or so other public universities, those not specifically mentioned in the article.</p>