MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Representatives of the West Virginia University faculty appear prepared to implement new strategies to help increase enrollment at the university.
WVU Vice President for Enrollment Management Fabrizio D’Aloisio discussed plans to follow through on strategic priorities to prevent declines in student enrollment during a meeting of the WVU Faculty Senate on Monday. While the preliminary number of enrolled students reached just over 25,000 for the Fall 2025 semester, D’Aloisio affirmed to the faculty in attendance that new strategies focusing on a unified recruitment method for WVU will become vital in the near future, something that was highlighted by new WVU President Michael T. Benson during his first State of the University address on Monday.
“We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us, we’re a great institution, but what’s happening in the state, in terms of the demographics—President Benson alluded to that earlier, but it’s happening across the country,” said D’Aloisio. “We do need to galvanize, and we need to make sure that we are all aligned.”
The presentation on how to aggressively approach student recruitment was based on recent data released by the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, which expects a peak number of high school graduates by 2025. This is expected to eventually lead to an overall decline in the student population due to a general decline in births that has taken place over several decades. Added to the over 25 percent drop in high school graduation rates that are expected in West Virginia over the next couple of decades due to a decline in population and other factors, D’Aloisio calls for the need to follow strategic review initiatives such as increasing market share by being more involved on a localized basis.
“There’s going to be some growth in some markets, but 38 states are going to see an overall decline in high school graduates,” said D’Aloisio. “So we need to work from within, and we need to develop strategies to increase market share in some of those markets where we’ll see declines.”
In another aspect of student recruitment that was discussed during the WVU Faculty Senate meeting, D’Alosio also discussed the need to have a campus-wide effort to have a collaborative enrollment strategy regardless of the chosen major of a prospective student. This includes an emphasis on aligned messaging and marketing that allows for students visiting WVU to receive the same information on what makes the university stand out, added to the numerous programs offered at the over dozen colleges that make up the Morgantown campus. The hope is that as a potential WVU student tours the campus, they’ll be able to appreciate all that the university has to offer.
“So when someone comes to visit campus and they come through our visitor center and they go through our info session, they go on a tour, and then when they go to a college meeting to meet with an advisor or faculty member, they shouldn’t feel like they’re in a very different university,” said D’Aloisio. “We’re all WVU.”
The need to increase student recruitment, and in turn student enrollment, at WVU was further put into focus as part of the first State of the University address given by Benson on Monday. Much like at the WVU Faculty Senate meeting, Benson emphasized a need to increase activities involving student recruitment to prevent any major downslides in student enrollment. Despite enrollment numbers reaching a mark that hasn’t been seen since 2022, WVU officials want the faculty to stay ahead of what appear to be very negative trends for higher education.
“There needs to be a long-term plan with feedback and input from all of you and other stakeholders across campus and the other campuses,” said D’Aloisio. “In order to assess where we want to go, how we’re going to get there, and what our priorities are.”