As expected, enrollment for this fall at Vincennes University is down, better than 5 percent over last year at this time.
But as Kristi Deetz, the university’s director of External Relations, told board members Wednesday morning, there’s no thought of throwing in the towel and calling it a day.
“We’re still focusing on enrollment,” she said. “We still have one more Start VU session coming up which we even extended to four days, we’re calling people who requested applications but who haven’t submitted them yet, we have faculty that are contacting their students who haven’t indicated they are returning ...
“We’re staying focused on not missing an opportunity to make contact with potential students,” she said.
“We’re seeing lower registration rates from the northern corners of the state,” she said, adding that was in keeping with a trend in higher education of students staying closer to home to go to school.
“Fewer students are traveling more than 100 miles from home,” Deetz said. “And that’s pretty much across the Midwest.”
Current enrollment was down more than 6 percent system wide for full-time students, she said, while there was a slight increase in the number of part-time students.
She said the overall decline was also pretty evenly distributed between the number of VU students who aren’t coming back this year and in fewer incoming students.
Deetz also said the university was doing more to recruit students who are more likely to go on to complete their degrees or programs. That’s in keeping with the emphasis the state now places on funding being tied to students earning their degrees.
But Deetz also said the university was helping those who applied but who weren’t academically qualified to be admitted.
“We’re helping those applicants, too, steering them in a direction where maybe they’ll be ready for admission in January or next year,” she said. “Maybe it’s them enrolling part-time and gradually becoming ready to be a full-time student, maybe its help with testing ... whatever we can do to help them, we’re looking at doing that.”
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