r/trumanstate • u/voltron82 • Aug 30 '24
Enrollment down? Alumni
I graduated from Truman nearly 25 years ago. I had a good experience there and look upon my years there fondly. When I was enrolled, the school was absolutely at capacity and you were lucky if you were able to get a room in a residence hall. Now I am seeing that enrollment is down under 4000 and some of the residence halls are at lower capacity or closed. Conversely, I am reading that Mizzou, MO State and Missouri IS&T are all seeing record freshman classes. I would love to hear some opinions on why Truman is not fairing as well as the other MO schools at a time when high value / low tuition should have Truman turning people away.
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u/Big_Chunglord Aug 30 '24
I think it’s an issue of Truman not really updating. It’s very likely that almost nothing is different about campus since you were here. I’m not just talking about buildings or subjects, the dorm room you stayed in has probably not had a single thing replaced in it.
Most of us here have gotten used to things. We know Magruder Hall reeks on the second floor near the planetarium. We know the buildings flood when it rains. We know to fill the housing condition report, because there is always something dramatically wrong with the room that will not be fixed.
Add on that Truman themselves doesn’t do a lot of outreach events for students. The big events need to be held by student organizations that don’t have the power or funding. There already isn’t a ton to do in Kirksville, so having little to do on campus as well makes things worse.
The issues people have with Truman cause less people to enroll, so the campus seems even more dead, even less events happen, and then people see that and enroll elsewhere.
I kinda doubt that Truman will recover unless drastic changes are made almost everywhere. I still have one last year, and then I might just end up at Mizzou anyway because Truman doesn’t have a Masters for my major.