Some of the issues mentioned likely contributed to the enrollment decline but this is true across the nation at all levels of institution. Enrollment figures will likely never rebound to the high point seen about 2012.
Mizzou also has issues with frats. I wouldn’t send a son into that culture.
The article about the medical school it looks like people may be upset that Mizzou is too conservative? Getting their funding cut because of the protest makes it seem like people are upset that they are too liberal.
I am still confused. What is the administration supposed to do? And where did the students all go?
I think the protests were partly to blame. I wouldn’t suggest otherwise. I just wanted to point out there was an expected downturn even before the protests.
Other schools in the state, like UMKC, Missouri State, and Missouri S&T have seen increases. Missouri State is also significantly less expensive than MU. (I noticed that my hs senior D received a lot of mail from MU this year–much more than my other kids did a few years ago–but it is not a school she would have considered.) All the bad press about MU has been a huge turn-off.
Not only one of the finest, but considered #1 undergrad J school for a while.
This bit of news and the possibilities of easier admissions/greater incentives for OOS is a bit ironic considering just a few years ago, I had a conversation with an older friend who expressed frustration/disappointment at how nearly 3 decades ago his oldest D flunked out of Mizzou’s prized Journalism school within her first and only year of college because of prioritizing partying/goofing off to the point the admins invited her to leave. He felt it was such a waste especially considering how competitive the admission process for their prized undergrad J school was back then.
Greater incentives for OOS students has not been our experience at all. My son is currently scheduled to go to Mizzou this fall. We didn’t receive one dime of any amount from them… even as a legacy. With that said, our son has recently had second thoughts about going so far from home, colder weather etc (we live in the Dallas, TX area), and likely will go to a school closer to home.
Sad about the enrollment figures, but honestly we were shocked they offered nothing in scholarships. He is an above average student, he applied to 5 other OOS schools and received a scholarship/academic merit from all of those schools.
Without incentives, especially as an OOS legacy, I would encourage S to look elsewhere.
It is relatively easy to get in-state residency and tuition in Missouri after 12 months.
http://registrar.missouri.edu/residency/
If you can afford the OOS tuition of $26,000 for the first year, it drops to $10,700 for the next three years. Mizzou probably figures that is a good enough deal to attract OOS students. With the drop in enrollment, off campus apartments must be cheap.
Missouri seems to pull students from three major sources, urban residents of St. Louis and Kansas City, suburban residents of those two cities and the rural remainder of the state. Where did the drop in enrollment come from?
If the administration did something that the people and state government do not like, then they can change administrators, but why act to damage the school?
The standard to get in to Mizzou is not overly high (24 ACT and a 2.0 gpa) so it would be tough to be much more lenient on that standard. Maybe they could trim it by a point or two on the ACT score, but I would not do more than that or they will struggle to get these students through.
It is entirely possible that the protests, the administration reaction, and news of the underlying problems that existed before the protests turned off lots of people on both the left and right (not necessarily for the same reasons).
As someone serving a student population that needs really safe safeties…I’ll be steering some applicants Mizzou-ward. It’s still a flagship national research university, and if they need to go deeper into the admit pool to fill the class, that could be great news for my students.
Exactly, and I wonder if the drop off is Department-specific in that high schoolers are starting to get the economic message that Journalism, as it used to be practiced, is shrinking rapidly…
When your Freshmen enrollment drops from 7,481 in 2015 to 4,009 this year, that drop is impacting ALL of your departments.
After a quick search, I couldn’t find any enrollment data by location, by year, that I could use track the decline. However, since we know the other in-state schools had a bump in enrollment, some nontrivial number is from in-state students. We also know that Mizzou was heavily recruiting OOS students (fall of 2015, OOS enrollment was at 37%), and since OOS students are likely the most sensitive to the issues at MU (while in-state students are more driven by cost and the appeal of the state flagship school), they likely make up the bulk of the enrollment drop.
Just a quick defense of Mizzou’s School of Journalism, which is still one of the best in the nation. They responded quickly to the Click issue, unlike the rest of the university…
In less than a day, they put out a strong statement in support of the student journalist and then moved to removed Professor’s Click’s “courtesy appointment”.
If you read the report put out by the law firm that reviewed the case (the CAVE report), it’s clear that after the video went viral (later that day), the School of Journalism faculty was shocked and angry by what happen. They quickly put out a statement, and the following day Click resigned her courtesy appointment…
Still, first impressions (from the viral video) may have mattered more in the court of public opinion (including prospective students) than the subsequent actions of the parties involved.
Like Hanna, I think this is the perfect time to go to Mizzou. No forced triples, plenty of room in classes, an administration bowing to every request.
The chapter of my sorority at Mizzou is one of the most diverse of the big school chapters. I don’t think everything about Mizzou is racist.
I wonder if we’ll see similar impacts at UCB and Drexel with next year’s applicants. Drexel may be particularly vulnerable due to the cost and lower prestige compared with UCB. I wouldn’t be surprised if UCB sees a significant drop in applications at least. I know that I won’t be encouraging D18 to consider UCB now (though I had been prior to this year).
“some nontrivial number is from in-state students”
Mizzou enrolls multiple hundreds of Illinois freshmen every year. It costs them about the same as an in-state Illinois school, and they get to be at a flagship, which they likely would not if they stayed in-state.
Many public colleges saw a rise in their enrollment during the Great Recession, but then fell back to normal enrollment levels after the economy recovered. However, Mizzou’s recent numbers look worse than many others.