Paul Smith’s College has been working to turn around its enrollment decreases over the past few years, but with a proposal by Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the works to cover tuition costs may make that task may be more difficult.

Shannon Oborne, chief marketing officer at the college, which has approximately 800 students as of fall, said if the proposal is enacted as described, it will have a “meaningful impact” on the college’s enrollment.

“The students and families who would be attracted to the public colleges because of the financial opportunities associated with the proposal, are in many cases, the exact same families and students that are choosing to come to Paul Smith’s College,” Oborne said.

The governor’s proposal is to provide free tuition to students from homes with household incomes of $125,000 or less a year, who have been accepted to a state or city university in New York in the form of the new Excelsior Scholarship.

Oborne said school administrators have discussed the potential impacts of the proposal and the different scenarios that might come about, but declined to go into specifics.

“It’s very early,” she said. “There certainly was not a lot of information released with the original proposals so frankly a lot of what we’ve been doing since it was originally announced is absorbing new information as it gets released.”

Oborne said the school has experienced decreases in student numbers over the years consistent with the national trend, but has made efforts to bolster enrollment such as extending its outreach to new markets.

“One of the interesting things we’re doing is reaching out to new geographies,” she said. “The reason that enrollment has been challenging for us is because the demographic population in our local area has been steadily shrinking, and so it’s important for us to be able to attract students from outside the local region. We’ve identified certain markets around the country as well as international markets that we feel are very likely to have prospective college students that appreciate the outdoors, that appreciate the type of curriculum we have to offer and would be excited to come to a place like this.”

Regardless of the proposal, Paul Smith’s will still be able to offer many benefits to its students, Oborne said.

“It’s really the distinction between public colleges and small, private colleges,” she said. “Here at a college like Paul Smith’s, students have a much greater interaction with their faculty members. They’re part of a small residential community so they’re not lost in a big crowd, and in many cases, there are opportunities for students to develop a customized program of study that is uniquely suited to what they want to do, so there’s a tremendous amount of flexibility there.”

The college has faced enrollment problems in the past, cutting its staff by 12 percent in May 2014 to address budget deficits and a state of financial exigency.