<\/p>\n
In preparation for Fort Lewis College\u2019s upcoming strategic planning, philosophy professor Justin McBrayer decided to take a look at the school\u2019s student body over time, and what he found surprised him: If the trends continue, out-of-state students will soon outnumber Colorado residents, perhaps as soon as fall 2016.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we need to talk about what this means for the future of our school,\u201d he told members of the Faculty Senate this week. \u201cWhat will this four-year public Colorado college look like if this continues?\u201d<\/p>\n
Generally, when FLC releases its student make up, it gives numbers for resident and nonresident students, but excludes the Native American tuition-waiver students and New Mexico students attending under a reciprocal agreement with Colorado that allows them to pay in-state tuition. McBrayer, who is the faculty representative to the Board of Trustees, wanted to see what it looked like when those students weren\u2019t excluded, he said.<\/p>\n
Provost Barbara Morris said the picture looks different when evaluating percentages versus raw numbers, because while FLC has a high percentage of nonresidents, in raw numbers of out-of-state it lags far behind Front Range schools such as the University of Colorado and Metropolitan and Colorado state universities.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome of our growth is propelled by nonnative nonresidents,\u201d said Michele Peterson, associate vice president for finance and administration, \u201cbut it\u2019s mostly propelled by Native American students.\u201d<\/p>\n
Native American students make up about one-third of the student body at FLC, and their number has grown by about 66 percent since 2004-2005. They hail from 150 tribes from across the nation.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of that is because of the Karen Middleton bill,\u201d said Steve Schwartz, vice president for finance and administration, referring to a bill introduced into the Colorado House of Representatives in 2010 that would reduce funding for the tuition waiver. Middleton later withdrew it. \u201cIt brought national attention to the tuition waiver, when we had media like The New York Times calling.\u201d<\/p>\n
The situation is complicated in other ways, Schwartz said.<\/p>\n
Colorado has predicted a relatively flat high school graduation rate for the next 10 to 15 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany Colorado high school graduates, particularly in this area, are choosing to go out of state for college,\u201d he said. \u201cThere are at least eight full-time recruiters from other states in Denver trying to attract Colorado\u2019s students. And if students are staying in-state, they prefer to stay within 250 miles of home, which eliminates us as a choice for most Front Range students.\u201d<\/p>\n
Throw in the fact that Durango attracts students who are \u201cmigrating\u201d out of their home states for college, and the picture becomes clearer.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome states, like New York, are places that see more students migrating out,\u201d Morris said. \u201cColorado is a state they migrate to because this is a nice place to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
The situation of almost equal percentages of in-state and out-of-state students is unique to FLC, said Faculty Senate President Dugald Owen. After seeing McBrayer\u2019s results, he analyzed several other public four-year colleges in the state, including Colorado Mesa University in Grand Junction, Western State College in Gunnison, Adams State University in Alamosa, CU Boulder and CSU in Fort Collins.<\/p>\n
Morris was surprised Western State wasn\u2019t more similar to Fort Lewis.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve put a lot of effort into recruiting out-of-state students,\u201d she said. \u201cBut Western has a robust online concurrent program (students taking college courses while still in high school), which may change their numbers. And Adams State is close enough to draw from the Front Range.\u201d<\/p>\n
The faculty was concerned that such a high percentage of out-of-state students might impact how much, or little, the General Assembly funds the school.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t see that so much on operating funds,\u201d Schwartz said, \u201cbut when we\u2019re lobbying for capital projects, some legislators will ask why they should be funding so many buildings for out-of-state students. We tell them a lot of those students will like Durango so much, they\u2019ll stay in Colorado.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
American tuition waiver, distance from Front Range drives growth<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":107177,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[156,120,950,132,13],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-107176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-adult-education","tag-colorado","tag-durango","tag-fort-lewis-college","tag-frontpage-lead"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107176\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107176"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=107176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}