PHOTO | Maddie VanderKooi
As the school year comes to an end, high school students across the U.S. are making the life-altering choice of what college to attend. This is a vital time for Arkansas Tech to engage with prospective students as much as possible.
Tech does many things to do this. It has a team committed to giving campus tours and inviting admissions centers, and most of all the Time out for Tech event. All of these things, however, were made difficult by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Arkatech editorial board believes that Arkansas Tech should invest in its prospective student outreach more than ever now that the pandemic is dying down. Since 2019, fall enrollment has dropped by 18.5%. Now is the time for Tech to improve its attraction methods.
The Arkatech editorial board believes that Tech should allocate more to the initiatives it already has, as well as make some additional ones. One thing that we suggest is highlighting individual departments and colleges to prospective students more.
This could be done in various ways. Department and college tours as frequent as the regular campus tours could be one way. Open-house-style events where each department gets to show off and meet with prospective students could be another.
We believe improvements like this may be especially important to keep less popular programs alive. Students interested in humanities may overlook Tech and the diverse programs it has to offer, thinking that it is simply a technical college.
We also believe that continuing to host programs for high school students like Governor’s School and band camps are a great way to encourage attendance here.
Showcasing student organizations may also help attract prospective students and give them a chance to interact with current students and ask them questions.
Without more students, many programs and opportunities may die. For this reason, the Arkatech believes it is important that Arkansas Tech tries to increase enrollment again.
