ndiana University Southeast students walk through campus Wednesday afternoon. The campus has seen a 13% decrease in fall enrollment compared to last year. Staff photo by Brooke McAfee
NEW ALBANY — Enrollment has decreased by 13% at Indiana University Southeast this fall, a drop that university leaders attribute to effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
This fall, enrollment is 4,051 students compared to 4,678 in fall of 2020 and 4,882 in fall of 2019. In a statement sent to the News and Tribune, IUS Acting Chancellor Kathryn Girten noted the challenges caused by the pandemic the campus has faced.
“It should go without saying that enrollment declines are due to myriad of issues associated with the pandemic,” she said. “The pandemic, which we are still navigating, has impacted everyone in our community. Both new and returning students expressed a variety of stressors related to the pandemic that influenced their ability to enroll.”
“In a typical year, we host and attend many in-person recruitment events, but last year our ability to make direct, in-person contact with prospective students was limited,” Girten said.
Classes at IUS started Aug. 23. The university is requiring COVID-19 vaccinations for students, faculty and staff at all campuses unless they are approved for an exemption. If they have an approved exemption, they must go through COVID-19 mitigation testing. Masks are also required indoors
in public spaces regardless of vaccination status.
Amanda Stonecipher, vice chancellor for enrollment management and student affairs, said she “cannot overstate” how difficult the past year and a half has been for the campus.
However, she said, energy is high on campus with the return of activities and full in-person learning.
“I joke, we might be down 13%, but we’re up like 100% in excitement and attitude and positivity, meaning our campus is excited that the parkings lots are full again and students are on campus — they’re engaging with us, they want to be here,” Stonecipher said. The enrollment at IUS has also dropped significantly compared to 10 years ago — in fall of 2011, more than 7,000 students were enrolled at IUS.
In terms of challenges to enrollment, Girten said the New Albany school also faces “heightened competition for students from both employers and a large number of higher education institutions in our area.”
The campus has seen an increase in diversity among the student population — degree-seeking students of color make up a record share of the campus’s enrollment at about 19% compared with 17.8% in fall of 2020 and 17.3% in fall of 2019.
“The region is becoming more diverse, and we want to reflect our service region,” Stonecipher said. “Our goals are to meet the needs of our region.”
The pandemic prevented IUS from going into K-12 schools and presenting large events on campus for recruitment, she said, and it’s easier to sell the university when prospective students can come to campus for an interactive experience.
“We wanted to put the safety of our students, staff and faculty first, so we limited a lot of our in-person events, and that is a challenge,” Stonecipher said. “There are some great virtual things that we were able to do, but it certainly dampened our ability to have the same outreach that maybe we’ve had in the past.”
Stonecipher noted that enrollment across Indiana University regional campuses is down this year. The university- wide enrollment was down 1.6% from last year, and IU Bloomington saw a 5% increase in enrollment this year.
“Higher education is struggling with enrollment across the country — not every sector and not every type of school, but a lot of schools are,” she said. “We don’t take that lightly for what that does to our campus, but we also recognize the place and time that we are in — in terms of higher education.”
Stonecipher emphasized that many factors were beyond the university’s control, including the issues students are facing in their own lives due to the pandemic.
“People are still dealing with the effects of this, whether it’s their own health, taking care of their family, so there’s really little we could have done with those own things — the economic, the social impacts of the pandemic,” she said.
Stonecipher said the university is not able to “pinpoint” whether the vaccination requirement or other public health measures have had any effect on enrollment. The IUS campus is at a 77% vaccination rate overall and a 90.6% vaccination rate for faculty and staff.
The IUS campus is preparing to enter a new 5-year strategic plan, which will include key goals such as “maintaining, sustaining and growing our university.”
Stonecipher said IUS is launching additional scholarship opportunities for students. This includes an automatic merit scholarship for any student admitted with a 3.0 GPA or above, as well as the “Grenadier Promise” scholarship for students with financial barriers to “fill in the gap” of what they don’t receive in state or federal funding.
Despite the campus offering the most affordable four-year undergraduate degree programs in the area, “we still know that paying for college can be a barrier or perceived barrier for many families,” she said.
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