Staben: Boosting enrollment a top priority for university

COEUR d'ALENE - University of Idaho President Chuck Staben said during the next year he would like to determine what programs are best to offer at the university's Coeur d'Alene center.

With only two months on the job, Staben hasn't had enough time to fully evaluate current offerings and the community's needs.

"We have a significant number of place-bound students here who are not likely to go to the university's main campus in Moscow," Staben said earlier this week. "We offer a few programs here. I'm not doubting that those programs are important, but I don't know that's exactly the right mix of what we should be doing."

He will evaluate what the center should offer in partnership with North Idaho College and Lewis-Clark State College.

Across the country, Staben said, center-based education like UI-Coeur d'Alene has declined, with more people choosing online instruction. Numbers have held steady during the past five years at the Coeur d'Alene center, where enrollment was 397 this term.

"We need to pretty carefully assess what the needs are in Coeur d'Alene and make sure that we meet those needs," Staben said.

The university would like to increase enrollment on the Moscow campus from approximately 11,000 to 15,000, over a period of several years.

"We have hired a person to help us institute a little bit more aggressive enrollment-management strategy," Staben said.

Much of the growth, he said, would come from the university's primary market: in-state high-school graduates.

"There are significant numbers of qualified high-school graduates who do not proceed on to post-secondary education in Idaho," Staben said. "So being more effective at encouraging those students to come to the university or become more educated in some way is a significant market."

To meet the state of Idaho's goals of increasing the percentage of its population with a college education, all institutions in the state need to step up their enrollment, he said.

He said UI can further tap into the "regional market," in places like California, where the school has had success recruiting students.

"With some of the difficulties that the California higher-ed system faces, I think we can continue to be successful in that sort of regional recruiting," Staben said.

There is potential for more international students, too.

"Our international students at the undergraduate level - about 6 percent of our population - I think we could get that up to about 10 percent," he said.

The non-traditional student or transfer student market is another source for potential increased enrollment, he said.

There is "significant capacity off-campus" for enrollment growth at centers like UI-Coeur d'Alene and online, he said.

Many of the university programs, especially in Moscow, have additional capacity, he said.

"We undoubtedly have capacity in the STEM disciplines," he said.

He pointed specifically to capacity in the university's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, its College of Natural Resources and the College of Business and Economics.

"I think there's a fairly general need for students," he said.