For the last several years the University of Wyoming has been working on issues of recruiting and retaining students. UW President Dick McGinity says the University is averaging over three thousand new students in the fall and roughly half of them are freshman.
Some legislators believe that if UW’s enrollment increases, it will generate more internal dollars for the University. McGinity says there is some truth to that, but they need to determine if they have enough faculty to fulfill the needs of more students.
“What we are not so sure about is instructional capacity or that is to say, faculty capacity, to teach the courses that the incoming freshman and transferees are going to want. And we need to look more carefully at that right now and we are beginning to.”
McGinity says one other focus is to retain more students. They are trying to keep roughly 80 percent of their incoming freshman, currently they retain around 74 percent.