Hypothetical. Ok, if I am in NC resident, why would I send my kid to Marshall for $23 grand a year when I could send them to ECU, App State, UNC Charlotte, etc. for $7 grand a year lower?
And that is the question for which there is no answer.
WVU and Marshall are essentially in totally different situations.
First, of course, the non-alumni hilljack has WVU's back in a way that Marshall will never enjoy. As long at the hilljack perceives WVU as "them there is usens" pretty much whatever the management does, including the massive subsidy of out-of-state students is OK.
And then you have totally different markets, and different products to sell.
WVU, as a de facto private school, plies the market in the northeast. The northeast, for various historical reasons, does not fund higher education like the rest of the country, rather it gives more money to students to spend where they will. And the northeast, and most of the country, have a tiered system of higher education. The schools with big sports are hard to get into. Really hard. Best and brightest. WVU has essentially open admissions. Anybody who has any business in any college can get into WVU. If you cannot get into WVU, your education should end at the 12th grade.
And WVU has, in addition to a massively subsidized tuition and open admissions, a certain product to sell. Cupcake academics, a local culture that might as well be New Jersey (and which makes fun of the very hilljacks that love "their" school so much), an Animal House lifestyle, and, while it has never won anything, some semblance of "big time sports".
So you have some kid. Standing there with a few letters that say in so many words "you are not smart enough" and being pointed towards Montclair State, or Radford, or SUNY-Wide Spot In the Road, or Frostburg, or what have you. And here is WVU offering him open admissions, cupcake academics, a life of four (or five or six) years of drunken revelry, and the lowest out-of-state tuition going. I can see who would go for that. The drunk. The loser. The sports mad New Jersite. Guido.
Marshall? Different product. Different market. MU borders not on the northeast, but on the South and Midwest. Places chock full of good colleges, well run by their state. Great schools. With reasonable tuitions and good academics. MU (leaving out the above mentioned Academic Common Market, the "metro rate" and a few special programs like Forensic Science or HELP) offers ??
Well, a nice, but grossly underfunded, mid-sized university that is kind of on the border between a small research institution and a big undergraduate centric one. Nice. Good. But not really distinguishable from Appy State, or James Madison, or ETSU, or Louisville, or Kent State, or Ball State, or College of Charleston, or so on. No real reason for an ordinary person with no relationship to WV and no desire or need for our special programs to look twice. Just as well go to their home state's offerings, which are a lot like MU, only more suited to them.
Which is why it is a Quixotic venture to try to be a de facto private school. The market, one that WVU turned its back on decades ago, is right there. West Virginia.
Our job and our burden.