What really caused MSU-Moorhead’s enrollment decline?
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Earlier this month, Minnesota State University - Moorhead President Edna Mora Szymanski told the Star Tribune that part of the campus' enrollment decline -- a factor in its $4.9 million budget deficit -- was due to a tightening of admission standards:
The harsh truth, Szymanski said, is that for many years, about 15 to 20 percent of the freshmen admitted to Moorhead didn’t meet its published admissions standards. It was a common practice at many universities, she said, as they struggled to keep their classrooms full. The problem, she said, was that many of those students were failing.
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Now the Forum of Fargo-Moorhead says that may not be the case:
… Only a fraction of the school’s enrollment losses since 2009 – the most among its four-year peers in the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities System – can be attributed to the reduction in students who did not meet admissions requirements.