Utah State University is trying to beef up its enrollment by luring more students across Utah's northern border.

A new pool of scholarship money allotted in the latest legislative session is starting to have an effect, giving the school more recruitment power to boost its steadily falling out-of-state enrollment figures.

The Logan school doubled its scholarship offerings this year to high school seniors in neighboring states, enticing at least 100 more out-of-staters to come to USU in the fall.

"This year there was a little bit of firepower. There was backing behind what we were trying to sell," said Craig Whyte, recruitment specialist for USU.

Much of that added enticement came from legislative action this year to give 400 more tuition waivers for out-of-state students to attend Utah colleges. USU got the lion's share of those waivers, although other border schools like Dixie State College also got a cut.

Overall, Whyte said USU was able to offer just under $3 million in scholarships to out-of-state students, with $1.5 million of that coming from the new state waivers.

Much of USU's recruitment effort this year went toward Idaho students with an additional $700,000 in scholarship offers in southeastern Idaho alone.

"The atmosphere of the valley here and what the university offers is similar to the environment in southeastern Idaho," Whyte said. "A lot of those people grew up on farms and dairies, and want to be in the agricultural program here."

School leaders hope the tuition waivers will help undo the damage done to enrollment several years ago when residency requirements were changed. Previously, students could start paying the in-state tuition rate after 12 months. Now, students must take 60 credit hours — about two years' worth — before they can get the in-state discount. At USU, that's about a $6,000 difference each year for out-of-state residents.

In the past few years, out-of-state enrollment at USU fell from 1,000 students to just 400.

"That was kind of a stiff bill for people to handle," said Jenn Putnam, associate director for recruitment. "You want to bring some outside perspective and introduce people from all over the place."

The drop in out-of-staters was particularly hard to swallow because the Idaho border is less than 50 miles from the USU campus. Many alumni want to send their children to the school they grew up around but simply can't afford it, Putnam said.

As a result of dipping enrollment, Putnam said school officials began to worry some courses would have to be closed.

"Ideally we'd like to get back to a ratio of having 1,000 out-of-state students to about 1,600 in-state students," she said. "Not this year, but we're going to make a good chunk that we've needed to make up."

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