Wright State faced financial problems between 2015 and 2020, due to a federal investigation into H-B1 visa misuse, budget issues that resulted in at least $53 million in budget cuts, and cuts to faculty and staff due to falling enrollment.
About $16 million of the lower than anticipated expenses were due to positions going unfilled. Greg Sample, the university’s chief operating officer, said it can take a long time for the university to fill positions because the process to hire is a long one.
“In other words, it’s not as though we can’t find people,” Sample said. “It’s just that our process takes so long.”
Wright State collected $1.5 million more in tuition and fees in the 2022-2023 school year than expected, though total enrollment is still down about 6% compared to the previous school year.
The difference in tuition and fees compared to student enrollment is because Wright State enrolled more international students, according to a financial analysis of Wright State’s fiscal year 2023 budget, which ends on June 30.
Wright State began actively recruited more overseas students last summer, which has resulted in an increase in international students, particularly those from India, Nepal, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia. Susan Schaurer, the university’s vice president for enrollment management, said Vietnam is another country the university is targeting to increase enrollment.
But Schaurer said the university is also working to recruit more students from the area of west central Ohio where the university recruits most of the students who attend Wright State, as well as recruiting from Ohio as a whole.
Schaurer said the university has been advertising their more niche programs, sharing alumni success stories and marketing to undergraduate students who may eventually want to attend medical school.
“We are simultaneously looking at our international enrollment strategies but fortifying our market presence in Raider country and throughout the state,” Schaurer said, referring to the area of Ohio that Wright State typically recruits from.
Many Wright State students are from Greene or Montgomery counties, but Wright State recruits heavily from a 16-county area that runs from Butler and Warren counties to the south up to Van Wert and Allen counties to the north, and east to Clark County.
But the number of high school graduates in the area has fallen due to a smaller population of high school students, which means Ohio colleges and universities are competing against one another for a smaller pool of Ohio-based applicants. On average, more people come to the state for college, according to the Ohio Department of Higher Education.
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