MINNEAPOLIS, Minn.
The Morris campus of the University of Minnesota sits on the prairie about 150 miles west of Minneapolis, 45 miles from the nearest Target Store, and far off the radar of many high school students shopping for colleges.
Mike Vandenberg is working to change that. He tools around the Twin Cities in a silver Toyota hybrid labeled with the words “University of Minnesota Morris,” often hitting three or four high schools in a day.
Other schools are making similar pushes.
With the population dropping in rural Minnesota and other parts of the Upper Midwest, the state’s rural four-year public universities are working to lure more students from inside and outside the state.
As they strive to fill every freshman class, schools like Morris, Minnesota-Crookston, Bemidji State and Southwest Minnesota State in Marshall have slashed their tuition for nonresidents, hired image consultants and started recruiting students as far away as Alaska.
Vandenberg’s job as an admissions counselor is to try to get the top high school students from the Twin Cities to put Minnesota-Morris on their short list.
