Paul Tosto
China and Illinois have been recruiting targets for the U for a few years now. The five-year trend maps, though, show just how important that growth has become.
The U is particularly sensitive to the idea that Minnesotans are being crowded out by the university’s desire to bring in students and higher tuition dollars from outside the upper Midwest.
Officials published a list of “myths and facts” along with the 2012 accountability report that included this:
Myth: The U is so hard to get into that it no longer represents Minnesota
Fact: The majority of our students are from Minnesota. On the Twin Cities campus, 69% of undergraduate students and 55% of graduate students are from Minnesota. Every year, 2,000 undergraduates, most from Minnesota, transfer to the Twin Cities campus. Keeping these students in Minnesota is good for our state, as is attracting high ability students from out of state, many of whom will stay, become active citizens and community and business leaders.
The trends are lower, though, if you look simply at the numbers of Minnesotans entering as freshmen.
Enrollment data posted by the U’s institutional research department tell a slightly different story.
Minnesotans made up 63 percent of the 5,514 new freshmen enrolled on the Twin Cities campus for fall 2012. That’s down from 2002, when Minnesotans made up 66 percent of those incoming freshman.