Wayne State University works to stem enrollment losses caused by Michigan’s economic crisis while providing management expertise to the city of Detroit.
For more years than most people can remember, Detroit’s Wayne State University has weathered nearly every storm to strike the Motor City — see-sawing economies, the 1967 riots that devastated neighborhoods all around the urban university’s campus, even the embarrassing fall from grace this year and eventual imprisonment of the city’s mayor.
Amid all the gloom buzzing around it, Wayne State has steadily grown in student population, academic offerings and facilities, sustaining itself as a jewel in a battered American crown. Wayne State proved its staying power and alumni support this summer when a $500 million capital campaign led by immediate past president Irvin Reid ended with more than $900 million in contributions.
Nobody saw this fall coming, however. Wayne State, the little engine that could, stalled. Michigan’s economic meltdown finally caught up with Wayne State as it felt a stunning drop in enrollment of nearly 5 percent. Total enrollment for fall 2008 was 31,668, including graduate and undergraduate students. It was the school’s first significant enrollment decline in more than a decade. Not exactly the kind of welcome gift the school had hoped to give its new president, Jay Noren, imported late this summer from Omaha.
“It’s essentially a function of the economy,” says Eugene Driker, chairman of the board of governors at Wayne State. “We’re working on a variety of programs to address it. We’re not sitting back saying ‘this is inevitable.’”
While working to reverse its enrollment slide, Wayne State is also planning to do more to help the city reverse its economic and political slide, highlighted by the resignation of embattled Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. Kilpatrick resigned from office in October after pleading guilty to charges he lied to authorities in conjunction with an ongoing investigation. He is serving a 120- day jail term and is barred from seeking office because of a five-year probation.
