-
Hi Guest, want to participate in the discussions, keep track of read/unread posts and more? Create your free account and increase the benefits of your WyoNation.com experience today!
UW Superbowl Ad
- Thread starter ZapPoke
- Start date
I just want conference championships!!!!!!!!
McPeachy
Well-known member
Agree, they need to advertise to grow enrollment. Absolutely. Surely we have all seen the CSewe advertising that is everywhere in Colorado (especially Denver)...WYO needs to compete. Our enrollment sucks, and the BOT, etc., have done little to work outside the box on it. Compare the growth of CSewe to the growth of WYO the last 30 years. Sickening. A small time thinking good 'ol boy network will cause that...
CSU's enrollment growth and UW's enrollment stagnation can be tied directly to overall population growth (or lack thereof) in each state. The number of graduating seniors from Wyoming public high schools has held nearly steady since 1990, while it has more than doubled in Colorado over the same time period.
I was surprised to learn that both CSU and UW are made up of about 60% in-state students and 40% non-resident students. I figured CSU would have been better at attracting non-resident students, but on a per-capita basis, that does not appear to be the case.
If UW wants to grow it's enrollment, it needs either the population of Wyoming to increase significantly or a nationally renowned program to attract a lot more non-resident students.
McPeachy
Well-known member
I don't agree that their enrollment is a product of population growth (only) - there is a lot more to it than just compiling numbers of people.
I would think that UW could sell value, compared to our closest peers - but hell, what do I know.
Overall population growth is the "EZ button" for enrollment increase. To say that it's tied directly (or tightly or whatever adjective you want to use) to state population changes is an obvious and damning observation for people who want UW to thrive. A person might make the case that you can have sustainable and meaningful enrollment increase at UW in the absence of state population growth but it's tough sledding at that point.
This (population growth) is a big problem. If it's true that growing UW in the absence of state population growth is going to be tough....you have to get bluntly honest about the following question. Do we want population growth? That answer might be no for a lot of reasons. People like to live in a sparsely populated state. There are political and social things that are in place in places like Bozeman or Boise or Fort Collins that are, at the very least, not antagonistic to growth. If we, as a state population, do not want those things, population growth is not going to happen.
Now...maybe we can hit on the right strategy of marketing and excellent leadership that propels us forward without population growth .... but I'm not holding my breath.
Population growth might not be the only variable, but I would bet it accounts for probably 90% of the variance in enrollment numbers between CSU and UW.
As a land-grant flagship university, of which CSU and UW both are, you don't have to do a whole lot to attract in-state students. Non-resident students are an entirely different story.
One of the main reason's we have such a problem with student debt in this country is a result of how we structure our federal student aid. We basically loan people as much money as they want to attend any school they want, as long as they can get admitted. Expecting a bunch of 17 and 18 years old's to make sound long-term financial decisions when the government will loan you a nearly unlimited amount of money is probably not a good idea. All this to say that value is not a great selling point for a significant amount of students.
I wanted to return to Wyoming after going out of state for school, but in my personal experience, it was an uphill battle.
I completed my undergraduate studies at UW and then left the state to attend graduate school under the PSEP program administered by WICHE. At the time, Wyoming did not require the students whom won the PSEP awards to return to the state to practice after completing their schooling. That being said, I wanted to come back to the state and reached out to the state association to see if they could help put me in contact with potential job opportunities in the state. They told me they only do that for members of the state association and that I would need to join in order to get that information. It was $450 to join. I told them that I had made similar requests to other states and was never asked to pay membership dues and that I was a born and raised native Wyomingite that wanted to return home - they didn't seem to care and didn't budge on their position.
Needless to say, I didn't end up coming back to Wyoming and have not lived there since. I'm still perplexed to this day about their response to me looking for job opportunities in the state.
With the current low cost of attendance, tuition specifically, adding additional students actually costs the University more than they bring in - so any increase in enrollment is a net financial negative (I'm not wholly certain the disparity in resident and non-resident enrollment, but I believe both actually cost UW money). This distortion in economic impact plays out similarly when we add people in most communities - it costs more in public funds and services than they contribute to local coffers through property and sales tax payments. Certainly, there are benefits to enhanced enrollment and population growth, but the pressure they put on budgets is real.
LanderPoke
Well-known member
Time to fire a bunch of administrators and DEI people. Trim the fat
I believe all of the DEI programs have been dismantled. I agree on the administrator front.
Even with these changes, there are structural issues that cuts cannot fully ameliorate. The issue at UW and growth generally is that we don't pay the costs of the services we receive. So every time we add a student or a new citizen, the balance is negative.
I would also suggest that our governmental and University structure of governance and funding is outdated. Trimming fat is nipping at the margins. We haven't had a reorganization of government since Sullivan was Governor (the 1980s). Why do we still have a livestock board and brand inspectors? So the state is in the middle of fights between private ag producers? Why are we in the middle of that? Why don't we move to a water oversight structure like SD has, where the government doesn't mediate fights between irrigators - but they go to court and fight on their own dime?Why do we have a state auditor and a department of audit. I know they currently do different things, but do they have to? If federal education dollars are going to be a pass through to the states, why can't they skip the Wyo Department of Ed and simply go directly to districts? Why have a Dept of Ed? Why does the state fund tens of millions of dollars to fund LaPrelle Dam, which serves less than 100 folks? Why didn't they plan for repairs, being the fiscal conservatives they suggest they are, when they built and operated the dam? If they had taxed themselves since it was constructed to pay for it, they wouldn't be asking for cash today, right? Why do we have a water development office? Why not have farmers, ranchers and industry pay for their own stuff? Why do we have a business council? Why do we have a Department of Ag, other than to certify weights and measures? For advocacy? I'd argue that, outside of the Military Department, WGFD, Corrections, some Revenue functions, Department of Health, the State Land Office, DFS, and a couple of other agencies, not many offer either the cash on cash or non-pecuniary returns that justify their existence. Let's return most of those duties to local governments, give them taxing authority and direct distributions, shutter state agencies (or move them out into the state), and make our government reflect today's needs. But I digress.
They don't have the right last names to make impacts in the small towns of Wyoming. Nepotism is a continued killer in Wyoming, I believe the last Governor tired a campaign to keep Wyoming graduates in-state, but why?
If we get past the last name debacle the pay scale is low compared to other states is just no there. Wyoming is no longer a "cheap" place to live. I was going to apply for an IT Project Manager for UW (located in Cheyenne) but the payscale was awful. I believe the high-end was close to $90k; with a data center coming to Cheyenne that salary will not attract any real talent much less people stay in that position.
Wyoming does have a "clannish" culture that is doing it no favors. Ironically....the low pay problem is sort of causing this. When there is no/little growth, pay and jobs stagnate and there is really no downside to preference being given to in-group types that may not be very good. Not only that, the low pay probably isn't attracting quality anyways. Once growth happens, the talent shows up and it's hard to justify keeping everything "in-house".
Brew_Poke
Well-known member
The value isn't there for out of state students. They really jacked up the out of state rates, so much so that it is comparable to going to school in Boulder or Fort Collins for an out of state student.
OrediggerPoke
Well-known member
Actually cheaper for a Colorado student to go to CSU than Wyoming. Colorado is similar in price but more expensive to live in Boulder.
I agree that the upside isn’t there like it used to be in terms of cost.
'PokeForLife
Well-known member
I have actually had the opposite experience after going through WICHE/PSEP. I got in contact with the main recruiter at Wyoming health resources network who commonly work with both WWAMI and WICHE grads. She contacted and got me into contact with anyone in the state I was interested in totally for free. Once I signed a contract I even asked her how I could compensate, and she said there isn't a way as its a non-profit org (maybe a 501c3 - someone else who knows more about those could probably correct me on the ins and outs of that). I'll likely just make a donation to WHRN because she was so helpful.
I'm sorry things didn't as well for you.
What I do think is a big problem though, is that they don't seem to take the slam dunk WWAMI candidates who will most likely come back to the state. Instead, they like to take people whose parents moved to Jackson while they were in high school and then went back east for undergrad but do still qualify as a Wyoming "resident." And then they wonder why the WWAMI program isn't resulting in more physicians returning to practice.
Last edited:
PorkerPoke
Well-known member
I started in IT as a systems analyst in the early 80’s. After 2 years I had to move because in starting a family I made only enough income to be $200 a month over food stamps and WIC. I was working on new technology in those days such as microcomputer to mainframe connectivity to replace data key entry from multi copy forms which was often less than 90% accurate and had to be shipped to Denver because there were a lack of data entry facilities in Wyoming.
Fast forward to around 2005 or so the same job in Wyoming that paid $22k in 1982 had skyrocketed to $52k a year. In Denver the same job paid 6 figures. I honestly looked into returning to Wyoming but at that rate I would have struggled in retirement.
Up to the $90’s is the best yet. I figure living in Wyoming would have saved $5k a year in tax costs but that hardly offset being up to $30k per year less in salary.
