MTSU raising admission standards to curb growth

MTSU’s enrollment has increased every fall since 1994, growing from 17,120 students that year to 21,744 in 2003 — a 27 percent jump.

The past three years have been especially intense; the university has added 2,623 students since the fall of 2000, or 13.7 percent beyond the 19,121 who were enrolled then.

MTSU passed UT-Knoxville last fall to become the state’s largest undergraduate school.

But the school has had trouble keeping pace with the growth, especially in the numbers of professors, classes and parking spaces.

With state funding for higher education sluggish and a lottery-funded scholarship program coming along this fall to lure more Tennessee high school graduates to state colleges and universities, the pressure to manage growth is increasing.

“Theoretically, higher education is supposed to be about access,” said Bob Glenn, MTSU’s vice president for student affairs and vice provost for enrollment management. “It’s about getting the average-Joe student into the institution. The realities of the situation are forcing us in a direction contrary to that.”

University President Sidney McPhee said MTSU is now focused on growing 2 percent to 3 percent a year. To do that, the school is raising admissions standards, reducing exceptions to those requirements, moving up admissions and scholarship deadlines, and trying to raise more private dollars.

Students who apply for admission in 2004-05 will get in with either a 3.0 high school grade-point average or a score of 22 on the ACT college-entrance exam. Previously, a 2.8 GPA or a 20 on the ACT would guarantee admission.

MTSU also established an admissions application deadline of July 1 last year. While it’s still possible to win admission after that date, the practice of getting admitted three weeks into the fall semester is pretty much a thing of the past, Glenn said.

Students also have to be more on the ball now to earn scholarships. Lynn Palmer, MTSU’s admissions director for the past 10 years, said the university had moved the scholarship application deadline from Feb. 1 to Dec. 1. That helps to weed out some of the less motivated students.

But officials are quick to counter any impression that MTSU is becoming an elitist school.

“We are a public institution,” McPhee said. “We don’t want folks not to apply because they think they can’t get in.”

To help accommodate its students, the university is trying to raise more money from private donors. Development officers have been added in three of its colleges — business, mass communication and basic and applied sciences — to allow for more personal attention to potential donors, said Joe Bales, vice president for development and university relations.

Some who contend with MTSU’s growth on a daily basis applaud the changes.

Chemistry professor Linda Wilson, who has taught at the school since 1981, said MTSU was “pretty overextended” and that not enough students valued education as they should.

“We certainly don’t need any more students,” she said.

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