The Michigan Tech Plan: Goal 3: Size and Composition

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GOAL 3: SIZE AND COMPOSITION - Achieve the best size and blend for our educational programs, which includes a diverse student body, faculty, and staff.

Graduate students need to grow from 10% to approximately 15% of the total student population, including a growth in the number of PhD students from currently 260 to about 500. Industry and businesses of Michigan need, and will continue to need, more engineers than are being graduated from Michigan schools. The State of Michigan needs to invest in increased capacity at Michigan Tech to educate more engineers and graduates in areas of high demand. As state funding permits, Michigan Tech will market and grow programs targeted to industry needs. In addition, we must take every step to encourage that Michigan Tech will be a diverse campus.

Objectives:

3.1 Determine the right mix of graduate/undergraduate students for the benefit of all of our stakeholders.

Strategies:

Develop a university resource model that can explore the financial consequences of curriculum, staffing, workload, average class size, scholarship, research, and both undergraduate and graduate enrollment decisions in terms of their short- and long-term impact.

3.2 Aggressively support and implement strategies to increase the diversity of our student body.

Strategies:

coordinate all efforts to recruit under-represented students, with a target of increasing the number of women students to those of our benchmarks;
and, similarly, increase the number of minority students to those of our benchmarks.

3.3 Manage and optimize enrollments within disciplines, schools and colleges for the benefit of all of our stakeholders.

Strategies:

coordinate and align academic and enrollment management efforts;
align financial aid with enrollment policy;
increase the effectiveness of financial aid by developing new programs, such as targeting national merit scholars;
examine a differential tuition structure by degree program;
implement incentives for increasing 4-year graduation rates.

3.4 As demand increases, obtain substantial additional resources to support programs important to the economic development of Michigan.

Strategies:

have industry and business leaders be advocates for increased State appropriations for programs relevant to the economic vitality of Michigan;
convince State government leaders to provide significant increases in general fund appropriations to increase Michigan Tech’s capacity to educate graduates.

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