The Goal 1.2 Committee evaluated Michigan Tech’s recruitment and retention of undergraduate students, including its progress toward meeting strategic objectives. Although a unified statement of purpose addresses both recruitment and retention, patterns of evidence for resources, accomplishments, continuous improvement, integrity, and SWOT analyses and action plans are sufficiently different to warrant separate discussions. This chapter draws on the Goal 1.2 Committee Report [6.2B2], the Enrollment Management Self-Study [2.6H6], the Educational Opportunity Self-Study [2.6F2], and the college and school self-studies (see Appendix 6). Please see these reports for additional information.

Patterns of Evidence

Purposes

In order to accomplish the University's mission of providing industry with highly qualified graduates, we must attract and then retain students who graduate with appropriate knowledge and skills to obtain jobs. In order to meet our goals for diversity, we must recruit and retain a student body with balanced representation in ethnicity and gender. Enrollment Management's mission to help recruit and retain a diverse student body with high academic qualifications is consistent with the University mission. Given our location and our engineering and science focus, accomplishing this mission and vision requires continued, focused outreach and recruitment, particularly for women and other underrepresented student groups. Fortunately, the growing importance of technology in today’s society, and the increasing numbers of women and high-school graduates from underrepresented groups, provide opportunities for success.

The Undergraduate Catalog [1.3A], which is widely distributed to potential students, parents, and school personnel, and the viewbook—The TECHnological Advantage [7.5E], a marketing tool to attract students and encourage them to apply to the University, both emphasize desirable factors which assist in recruitment and retention: academic excellence, a caring environment intent on students' success, successful placement at the end of the college experience, and career-management skills such as teamwork and leadership to help students change with the times as their careers develop. Two Undergraduate Student Government (USG) surveys [6.2B2] conducted in Fall 1996 and Spring 1997 (30% and 15.5% response rates, respectively) identified the two main reasons for choosing Michigan Tech as academic reputation (24%) and future job opportunities (15%).

Since 1993, the Viewbook [7.6A2] has emphasized our "good value" (benefits which exceed costs) and placement experience, in order to reflect the increasing importance of educational cost and jobs as factors in parental and student decisions about selecting an undergraduate institution. However, while Michigan Tech is a "good value" for engineering and science education, for other disciplines it is priced at a premium compared to Michigan’s regional, comprehensive universities. This may make it more difficult to attract and retain a significant number of students in a greater diversity of disciplines.

Ambitious enrollment goals of 7,100–7,300 students were established in the Strategic Plan [2.1D2, "Quantitative Context for Planning"] which is presented to the Board of Control and other internal constituencies. Also in the Strategic Plan, we set the goal of increasing the numbers of students from underrepresented groups at a steady rate, to more than doubling the numbers enrolled from 1992/93 to 1997/98. Additional enrollment goals for women and students from underrepresented groups were initially established by the 1989 Minority Programs Task Force (MPTF) [5.5A], and revised by the PCW (Presidential Commission for Women) [5.5C] and the 1995 Retention Task Force [5.4A]; these are discussed below. These goals have been widely distributed internally and include recommendations for achieving them. The Retention Task Force also set ambitious 10-year retention goals of 95% retention after the first year, 90% after the second year, and 85% after four years.

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