Public institutions that once counted on state support, regardless of enrollment or retention numbers, are now struggling with funding issues their private counterparts have faced for decades. Just in the last five years, with budget cuts across almost every state in the country, even the biggest-name public universities have had to address recruiting in a way they haven’t had to before.

That doesn’t mean recruiting students. It means recruiting the right students. The largest undergraduate university in the state of Tennessee – Middle Tennessee State University – is facing that issue head on. MTSU, with a current enrollment in excess of 26,400 students, has recently released a new Strategic Enrollment Plan aimed at controlling inevitable growth.

Tennessee’s formula for funding higher education has changed: it’s now based on retention and graduation rates, not enrollment. MTSU recently approved a plan to grow in a deliberate, economically viable way. The Strategic Enrollment Plan focuses on attracting more students who are likely to graduate, and it uses a variety of support systems to help keep all students on a path to academic success. Set to take effect in 2012–13, the plan projects that MTSU will reach its maximum enrollment of 30,000 by 2016, staying on firm financial ground along the way.

The plan would slow the growth of the freshman class, targeting high-achievers by slightly raising academic standards for guaranteed undergraduate admission (pending summer approval by the Board of Regents). It would increase the number of graduate students, who earn their diplomas more quickly and reliably than undergraduates. It would direct recruitment efforts and scholarship dollars to transfer students, who have survived the so-called dropout years of early college. And it would expand the international student base, a high-achieving and lucrative population, whose members generally complete their degrees on time.

Retention, in other words, is critical.