Participation in the program is voluntary on the part of each state, and its institutions. In order for the public and private institutions to join the program, the state's higher education coordinating authority must approve state participation and agree to appoint a representative to the Midwest Student Exchange Council. The states, their participating institutions and their citizens benefit from the Midwest Student Exchange Program in several ways. The financial burden of the tax-paying parents of those students is reduced as a result of the state's participation. State coordinating bodies are able to leverage the expanded access to avoid costly program duplication if they so choose.
Institutions have another means of diversifying their student populations.
MSEP also offers them a mechanism for balancing academic program offerings with optimal enrollment levels, and for attracting students with special talents into programs such as the fine arts and humanities where scholarship assistance is very limited. For the fourth consecutive year, the Midwest Student Exchange Program experienced double-digit growth in student participation. While student enrollment continued to increase, institutional participation was mixed. As the program matures, student enrollments are increasingly concentrated in a core group of institutions. Not surprisingly, those institutions with the greatest number of MSEP enrolled students are also the institutions that actively promote the program through the World Wide Web, course catalogs and other means.