MTSU Looks For New Ways To Boost Enrollment Numbers

Some four-year schools in Tennessee are anticipating declining enrollment in their freshman classes, because the state’s free community college program, Tennessee Promise, begins this fall. So schools like Middle Tennessee State University are trying to find new groups of students to recruit.

MTSU provost Brad Bartel says the school could lose 100 or more freshmen next fall to community colleges. It currently has 2,900 first-time freshmen, according to the school’s metrics, so 100 isn’t a huge number — but it’s still enough for MTSU to need a plan.

“We’re looking at ways to compensate for that,” Bartel says. “We’re looking at different populations that we had not aggressively gone after in the past.”

MTSU is not only planning to fight head-to-head with Tennessee Promise for entering college freshman. For example, the university is going after students who are still in high school but can take some college classes. And it’s working with state agencies to train their workers at MTSU: Bartel says the school has been tailoring its environmental science curriculum to train employees with the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation.

The university is also contacting thousands of adults who used to attend the school but never graduated. “We have all these populations of adult learners that are out there that no one has ever really touched,” Bartel says.

That’s something that might change soon: The governor’s office has been observing MTSU’s outreach to adult learners and plans to incorporate it statewide, as part of an effort to boost the number of Tennesseans with a college degree or certificate.