BANGOR – Out-of-state residents have long considered Maine to be a great spot for vacation. Now the University of Maine System wants them also to view Maine as an attractive place for higher education.

Next month, UMS plans to launch a $400,000 marketing campaign designed to increase student enrollment – both from Maine and from elsewhere in New England.

Promotional materials that use the tagline, “Seven unique universities. One amazing state,” will be sent to tens of thousands of college-bound juniors in the five other New England states and to hundreds of guidance counselors in Maine and throughout New England.

Students will be sent a brochure that showcases Maine and its public university options. The hope is that the mailing will spark their interest in visiting the schools during April vacation. Later this spring, these same students will be contacted via e-mail.

Guidance counselors will be sent a poster as well as a catalogue about the seven campuses with an easy-to-read list of the academic programs offered at each university.

The printed materials will encourage people to visit the university system’s newly designed Web site that will be unveiled next month.

UMS spokesman John Diamond said recently that the campaign, which complements the individual in-state recruitment efforts made by each of the seven UMS campuses, is the first systemwide initiative to increase out-of-state enrollment.

It is based on focus-group research indicating that many out-of-state students and adults didn’t realize that UMS is composed of seven unique campuses, each with a different mission and program.

The people who were interviewed saw Maine as a great place to vacation and considered it to have a wholesome lifestyle and a high quality university system, Diamond said.

“Maine has a certain cachet with people from outside the state. We wanted to capitalize on this Maine mystique to brand our universities in a positive way,” he said.

Currently, out-of-state students comprise 12 percent of UMS enrollment, according to Diamond, who said the system plans to establish benchmarks for the number of in- and out-of-state students it hopes the new marketing campaign will attract.

Diamond emphasized that the out-of-state student recruitment effort would not limit access to in-state students in any way.

“We actually expect that our out-of-state recruitment will help with our in-state recruitment,” he said, since research shows that one of the reasons Maine students look outside the state for higher education is because they want to interact with people from different backgrounds and life experiences.

“If we want to make our universities more attractive to Maine students we need to offer them an educational experience that exposes them to the perspectives they’re seeking,” he said.

Also as part of the university system’s new publicizing efforts, it has created a communication and outreach initiative called University Advocacy Network that includes a web site at www.universityadvocacy.org. The goal of the network, which will cost $65,000 annually, is to build greater support for Maine’s public universities.

People may sign up free of charge to receive periodic updates about university-related news, special events and members-only activities. In addition, the Web site features news about UMS as well as tools for communicating about the universities.

Seeking more students from outside the state makes sense for several reasons, Diamond said. The number of Maine high school students is expected to decline dramatically over the next few years. “We can protect the quality and financial stability of our universities by offsetting the smaller pool of potential students from Maine by increasing the number of students we attract to Maine,” he said.

In addition, the higher tuition paid by out-of-state students helps cover the cost of maintaining high quality public universities.

Increasing the number of out-of-state students should benefit the state’s economy, since a certain percentage of these students will remain here after graduation, contributing additional dollars in consumer spending, Diamond said. That also will help Maine reach its goal to increase the number of residents with a college degree.

If an additional 40 out-of-state students enrolled in the system, it would more than cover the total $465,000 marketing and advocacy initiative, he said.

Consultants that UMS worked with for the marketing and advocacy project are: Strategic Marketing Services of Portland; Swardlick Marketing Group of Portland; Pennisi and Lamare of Falmouth; and TransitID of Portland. All vendors were selected through a competitive bid process initiated in 2004.