Dive Brief:
- The president of Warren Wilson College is working to attract more conservative students to enroll in the school, joining a student body whose population is seen as predominantly liberal, according to Inside Higher Ed. President Lynn Morton argues that colleges and universities should not appeal to a "sliver" of the potential student population.
- Warren Wilson is not the only college working to ideologically diversify its student body, with a recent Inside Higher Ed survey finding that 9% of public colleges and 8% of private colleges are endeavoring to recruit more conservative students.
- However, since the school does not ask about political affiliation on its admission forms, the college must find other ways to reach conservative student populations. She wants more public discussion on campus to help potential conservative students feel more welcome, and is concentrating on recruiting from rural areas that have predominantly conservative-leaning populations.
Dive Insight:
Embracing diverse populations is critical to strengthening the campus and intellectual life and vibrancy of their campus. When speaking to Education Dive about international student enrollment in the United States, Cynthia Miller-Idriss, an associate professor of education and sociology at American University, noted that colleges and universities sometimes takes financial hits by offering substantial scholarships to international students, in order to reap benefits demographic and intellectual diversity offer campuses, both in terms of potential student recruitment and the educational strength of the institution itself. Many schools likely feel similarly about attracting conservative students, especially in light of last year's election and constant critiques about universities as politically correct bastions of liberal thinking, whether that critique is fair or not.
Many premier colleges and universities are either in major metropolises with voting blocs that lean Democratic, or in towns that have built around the university and often mirror its sensibilities. Colleges and universities located in urban areas should place more emphasis on recruiting from areas outside the cities; colleges and universities in upstate New York, for example, are undoubtedly looking to New York City for recruiting efforts, but is an institution like NYU placing an emphasis on recruiting potential students who reside in more rural, and potentially more conservative, regions of the state? Continued interactions with these communities, even if students do not eventually decide to enroll in the institution, could help lend perspective to administrators hoping to get a gauge on a broader population of potential students.