(01-27-2021 11:27 AM)NH/JMU Saxkow Wrote: (01-27-2021 11:10 AM)Longhorn Wrote: (01-27-2021 10:25 AM)NH/JMU Saxkow Wrote: (01-27-2021 09:33 AM)JMUNation Wrote: It is amazing to me how much people nit pick JMU and how it is run. It is one of the most popular schools in Virginia if not the most. Students love going there today as much as they did 30 years ago. The reason they don’t recruit heavily in New Hampshire is because they don’t need to. Some schools need to cast a wider net because they aren’t JMU.
Based on some of the posts here an uneducated reader would think JMU was headed toward failure. Maybe they should just close the school.
I'm looking at the population trend and yes, it does give me slight concern. The overall child population nationwide has been dropping over the last 10 years. If we need to admit 75+% when there are 12.5 million high schoolers, what happens when there are only 12M or 11.5M? We're either going to have to lower our standards, cut programs, or widen our applicant pool. Obviously, I would like it to be the latter...and I feel the school should be proactive.
My point is the New England region is nice and compact with a large pool of high-quality students to tap into. In the amount of time it takes to drive to the 757 from Harrisonburg, I can drive to Hartford from NH. I am not saying they need to do a full-court press in the northeast, but they should at least make an effort. Otherwise, JMU could start approaching shortfalls in a decade.
JMU’s Senior Administration is well aware of trending demographics as it projects outwards towards enrolling future potential Dukes. You can rest assured that the projected decrease in the potential pool of applicants is understood in detail, and professionals have positioned JMU to continue to thrive in this more competitive environment. This insight should comfort all JMU alums, and worry other state and private institutions in the region about their futures.
As for attracting potential New Hampshire students, JMU will continue to attract a few applicants from NH, however, it’s not a major population center, and the majority of JMU’s out-of-state students will continue to come from NJ, PA, and NY. There is also a strong contingent of CT applicants, but less so from Massachusetts.
The VA General Assembly placed a cap on JMU’s enrolling out-of-state students about 20 years ago, the justification being that as a state school JMU should rightfully be serving VA students. The cap (which is a guideline not hard number) is 70% VA students and 30% out-of-state and international.
In the late 90s (during the last years of Carrier’s presidency) the percentage of out-of-state students at JMU was beginning to approach 40% (I recall a high of around 38.5%), a number that was great for JMU’s budget, yet produced the backlash that resulted in the 30% number. I believe the present number of out-of-state students enrolled at JMU hovers around 28-29%. Still, students from out-of-state come from almost every U.S. state and territory, and around 80 countries (although that number has been dropping).
Good - as long as it goes beyond monitoring...
Do the other state schools in VA have that cap on out-of-state students or is it just for JMU? Is there talk of raising that cap to make sure standards don't drop?
Certainly NH is not a large population center, but I would say that Massachusetts (specifically Worcester to Boston) is. (And my area is just a continuation of that - Boston commuter communities.) I am just saying some effort could produce great effects.
I’m not as familiar with the guidelines for other VA publics regarding in-state vs. out-of-state percentages, however, I think it’s safe to say there are guidelines limiting out-of-state admits at all schools.
Interestingly, VT’s admissions became quite aggressive about 3 years ago, admitting larger freshman classes than anticipated by other VA publics. This decision was entirely within VT’s right, but it was seen and interpreted as predatory by other state schools. In particular, it hurt Radford and ODU, who missed their enrollment targets, and left JMU scrambling to meet its enrollment target by going deeper into JMU’s applicant pool and waitlist (JMU did eventually meet its enrollment/budget target, however ODU suffered a substantial budget shortfall which cut across all areas, including support for athletics). As I shared, VT was within its right to do what it did regarding admission decisions, but the aggressive stance taken by the VT Director of Admissions was loudly protested.
There hasn’t been any recent talk of raising the out-of-state cap at JMU, although it would make sense to do so. For starters, out-of-state tuition $$$ makes it less expensive for Virginia to support JMU, and generally out-of-state applicants have higher High School academic admission profiles.
Of course, as soon as you displace a potential VA student with an out-of-state admit you provoke debate about who the state schools should be serving.
There is an interesting rationale/element to trying to attract and enroll the best and brightest from other states. I don’t know what current stats might reveal, but an older study I was familiar with documented that about 78% of all out-of-state students settled in the state where they graduated.
The impact of this phenomenon should be obvious...if VA was attracting the best and brightest young people from other states, then those students would become the future engines of economic growth and development for VA...and their settling in VA would be a net loss for their home states.
In essence, each state is in competition for brain power with other states. Not unlike the city-states during the Italian Renaissance who competed with one another (Milan vs. Florence and Pisa, etc.). The better the opportunity for attracting the brightest citizens, the more likely the city-state would flourish economically and culturally.
Way back when John Connally was Governor of Texas he wrote a policy paper promoting the investment in the state’s universities (in particular UT Austin and Texas A&M). His paper outlined the need to diversify the Texas economy away from the big three of Oil, Cotton and Cattle, and that only an investment in Higher Education could leverage that change. He was right, and the growth and vitality of the major urban centers in Texas bear it out.
So (long post) there’s a reason we need a cap on out-of-state admits, but there’s also a reason VA needs to attract the best and brightest from other states.
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JMU Academics/Reputation
The only thing I would add is that the bottom tier is Richmond and any other school associated unironically with sweater vests.
