After months of research and negotiation involving hundreds of people across campus, I’m pleased to announce that we have reached agreement on a contract with INTO to expand and enhance our international student recruiting.

INTO, a British company, not only recruits international students interested in studying in the U.S. but also runs a first-year “pathways” program jointly with its partner universities. This program is language intensive and involves an on-campus living-learning community that fosters successful transitions and connects the students to an array of CSU support services.

As those of you who have followed this process know, we were interested in exploring a partnership with INTO because of the tremendous potential to increase our enrollment of international students, which has historically been low compared to peers and is now about 2.2% of our undergraduate enrollment. International students broaden the perspective and experiences of our Colorado and U.S. students, they enrich our community as a whole, and they return to their homes with a better understanding of the commonalities that connect us as human beings. In addition to the less tangible benefits of internationalizing our campus, such students bring additional tuition revenue to support all of our students and our general university operations.

Still, despite the many potential benefits, we went into this process with a lot of questions and concerns, including the potential impact on our academic programs, admissions, costs, capacity, and student success rates. I want to particularly thank the faculty members who have worked on this project and whose intensive participation has resulted in a much better agreement for both CSU and INTO. Among the key questions we’ve had to address is how we will best deploy revenue to cover expansion of academic programs that see enrollment increases out of this partnership.

While it may take a few years to get a handle on enrollment patterns, our plan will be to direct revenue back to the impacted area — allowing for the hiring of new faculty in response to enrollment pressures — with the remainder going to the Education and General budget of the university, which supports our academic programs and university operations. At no point will we expect academic units to accommodate a large influx of international students and not receive appropriate resources to build long-term quality and capacity.

I believe we’ve now reached an agreement that will be a real benefit to our campus and students over the long term. It has taken a long and detailed series of visits and discussions to get here, but we’re truly excited about the potential of this partnership and feel confident that the contract we’ve reached has the safety provisions we feel are needed to protect the institution’s reputation and quality.

If you’re interested, additional information can be found in the press release and in Today@ColoradoState. Again, thanks to all who have taken part in this extensive process.

-tony

Dr. Tony Frank
President