In the recent Board of Trustees (BOT) meeting, Rose Martinelli with Huron Consulting Group presented her findings from a study focusing on the University of Wyoming’s capacity for enrollment growth and suggested a tuition decrease for out-of-state students.
Martinelli has helped the University look at admission and retention issues for two years. Her study, conducted over the past 12 to 16 weeks, was designed to help give UW a better idea on the demographics of the students they have been recruiting, how much these students and families are willing to pay and what can be done to make them stay until they graduate. This recent study (12-14 weeks) focuses on institutional capacity and price.
“If we know that enrollment is important to the University, we need to look at how much capacity the University has to grow and what prospective students think about going here,” Martinelli said.
According to her study, money is one of the biggest considerations among families and prospective students and many out-of-state students rule out the University of Wyoming because going out of state is more expensive to them then staying in-state.
“As far as tuition goes, I think UW has a pretty reasonable out-of-state cost, but it’s still expensive,” UW student Kelsi DeRosier said. “If they lowered the cost for me to go here though, I’d be happy. I wouldn’t have to take out so many loans.”
The advertised cost of tuition, known as the sticker price, at UW for out-of-state students is $15,000 a year, however, with scholarships the actual average amount of out-of-state tuition cost is around $10,000. Martinelli’s study revealed that many students don’t have an accessible way of calculating that actual cost.
“The University needs to reduce out of state tuition to $10,000 (the sticker price), so that it’s more transparent to prospective students and we get a chance to have a dialogue with the students before they write UW off because it’s too costly,” Martinelli said.
I think that we need to be very true to what we plan to charge students,” President Laurie Nichols said. “And not make people guess, because we’re really making people guess right now.”
The reduction, if approved by the Board of Trustees, would have no affect on in-state tuition.
“The Wyoming constitution has a clause that says it wants to provide an education at almost no cost to Wyoming residents,” Martinelli said. “It’s very important to the governing body that Wyoming’s higher education is affordable.”
This proposal is in its early stages still. Martinelli’s presentation was made at the last BOT meeting and will be looked at again during their next session in March. They’ll be taking a closer look at how it will affect current students and when the best time, if any, to implement the reduction.
