The university is paying $104,000 this year to a higher education consulting company, Noel-Levitz, in hopes of increasing enrollment.

The Board of Regents decided in May for the first time in five years to use a new marketing campaign with Noel-Levitz to reach out to high school seniors with a direct marketing campaign and a recruiting plan.

The funds for their services were received from the MSU Foundation.

“The university will break-even on the cost of the service if it realizes 17 additional students through these efforts,” said Keith Lamb, vice president of student affairs and enrollment management.

Lamb said MSU would find this service to be of considerable value.

Abilene Christian University, Tarleton State University and the University of Incarnate Word have all used the services of Noel-Levitz.

“A direct marketing campaign is one where you purchase lists of potential students and send them information about the school,” Lamb said. “I am sure every student at MSU received information from colleges during their junior and senior years of high school.”

Lamb said hiring a marketing company is fairly standard in recruiting and is where an institution generates most of its prospect.

Three direct marketing campaigns are being developed for Midwestern. One list is of 10,000 seniors, who received high scores on a predictive model of likelihood to enroll. According to Lamb, this week high school seniors will receive a hard copy letter, followed by 15 e-mails with different subjects.

The second campaign is to 10,000 seniors not on the above list, that meet certain characteristics. The last campaign will be a spring campaign targeting high school juniors.

“We want them to be familiar with MSU before they receive information their senior year,” Lamb said. “We feel the three campaigns is an aggressive first step for an institution that has not participated in direct marketing in the last several years.”

The recruiting plan with Noel-Levitz where a consultant with extensive enrollment management experience has visited our campus.

“One of these items on which we need to improve is our communication plan with prospective students and applicants,” Lamb said. “Our recent foray into social media is a step in the right direction, however, there is much work that remains in this area.”

With last week’s announcement of a 4.3 percent enrollment drop, Keith Lamb, vice president of student affairs and enrollment management, said he was certainly disappointed, but not entirely surprised by the results.

“The size of our freshman class has been steadily decreasing, and our senior class has been steadily increasing,” Lamb said.

Lamb said there is no magic bullet when it comes to university enrollment.

This past academic year, Midwestern graduated 1339 students, which is more than the university’s ten-year average. Yet even with a high graduation rate, the university did not place the graduates at a 1:1 ratio.

“While there are a number of reasons we did not replace at a 1:1 ratio, such as a declining traditional age population based in the area from which 40 percent of our students come from, the bottom line is we must do a better job attracting and cultivating new students.”

Lamb said he is focusing on recruitment and retention this academic year.

For the first time in five years, the university is looking for outside help to assist with enrollment woes.

Lamb said he expects a major impact on enrollment to come from domestic students. Two weeks ago, Lamb and Randy Glean, director of international services, spent time in China in hopes of recruiting students.

“China has the world’s largest population and one of the world’s fastest growing economies,” Lamb said. “If we expect our students to operate in a global economy, it is important for them to have this interaction.”

The university international student population is just under 10 percent of the total student population, with students coming from over 57 countries.

“A comprehensive university should expose its students to the world,” he said. “The United States is where the world meets, more specifically, universities in the United States are where the world meets.”

Midwestern is advertised heavily in other countries such as billboards in South Africa and Zimbabwe, radio broadcasts and television commercials in the Caribbean and newspaper advertisements in Nigeria, India and Sri Lanka.

“At one time Midwestern had an exchange program with Mexico, Morocco and Japan,” said Kerrie Cale, associate director of international services.

“The university works closely with other representative agents in other countries to promote Midwestern,” said Gidget Pattibon, international immigration specialist.

Despite all of the efforts for international recruitment, Pattibon said a lot of the U.S. embassies have not been granting as many visas to international students than in past years.

When recruiting students to Midwestern, the size of the institution, quality of the faculty, competitive cost and quality of life are the selling points Lamb said he makes.