© 2024 KMUW
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

WSU To Offer Tuition Break To Oklahoma, Texas Applicants

Nadya Faulx
/
KMUW/File photo

Wichita State University is focusing on the I-35 corridor for its next recruitment strategy.

WSU is offering reduced out-of-state tuition rates for Texas and Oklahoma residents--the same break it currently gives those from neighboring states like Missouri. Students who attend Wichita State from those states will pay one-and-a-half times the in-state tuition costs.

WSU Senior Vice President and Provost Tony Vizzini says recruiting along the Interstate 35 corridor makes sense.

"We know that if you bring students up to Kansas to educate them in Kansas, there’s a likelihood that they’ll stay in Kansas. That likelihood is compounded if they are coming to areas similar and that transit path is there," he says.

Vizzini says the university is also specifically targeting potential students in Oklahoma City and Tulsa by offering an even greater tuition reduction.

The official headcount at the university this fall shows a 3.4 percent decrease in students compared to last year. Current enrollment is 14, 495 students.

Vizzini says the university has spent about $1.6 million the past two years for out-of-state recruitment efforts. He says the marketing firm Royall has been instrumental in increasing the number of applicants from what he calls “hard-to-reach” regions.

--

Follow Deborah Shaar on Twitter @deborahshaar.

To contact KMUW News or to send in a news tip, reach us at news@kmuw.org.

Deborah joined the news team at KMUW in September 2014 as a news reporter. She spent more than a dozen years working in news at both public and commercial radio and television stations in Ohio, West Virginia and Detroit, Michigan. Before relocating to Wichita in 2013, Deborah taught news and broadcasting classes at Tarrant County College in the Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas area.