Wayne State College President Marysz Rames has explained WSC’s new recruitment plan and how the college plans to address the 4 percent budget cuts.
“While the college is trying to bring in more students each year, this is not related to the budget cuts,” she said on Monday.
“They are mutually exclusive. The whole campus is affected by this cut, and we have been working on trying to bring in more students for a year now,” Rames said. “We have been strengthening our abilities to take in students and trying to find a strategic enrollment plan to see what we could provide students and to see how many students we would be able to bring in, regardless of any budget cuts.”
Rames and her team have been working on their enrollment plan for a year and are excited to see it in affect.
“Our strategic enrollment planning includes recruitment and retention of first-year undergraduate students, transfer students, online students and graduate students both online and in person,” Rames said.
She also pointed out that while the budget cuts are definitely something to plan for, an institution can’t use the money from next year’s students before they are enrolled.
“You can’t use the numbers of students that are supposed to be money from next year’s students before they are enrolled.
“You can’t use the numbers of students that are supposed to be coming in next year if they aren’t here yet. You can’t use students that aren’t here yet to pay for things happening now,” Rames said.
She explained that instead of using money that hasn’t come in yet, the school has just shifted where the money is going.
“We are going to use the money from vacant positions,” Rames said. “Instead of using this money to pay for upgrades we are just going to use it to cover the reductions that are being put in place right now.”
Normally, when there is an open position, someone on staff helps to cover it, until a new employee is hired.
The school then uses what would be a paycheck to make upgrades and supply other necessary funding. For now, it will be used to supplement the four percent budget cuts.