EKU eyes enrollment increase this fall

By Bryan Marshall
Register News Writer

August 29, 2008 10:25 pm

— More students were on the Eastern Kentucky University campus when classes began this week than the start of the 2007 fall semester.
The preliminary enrollment for the first day of classes was 15,629 students, a 3.2 percent increase from last fall.
However, university officials expect that more than 16,000 students will be enrolled by the time the institution submits its official numbers in October to the state Council on Postsecondary Education.
“It’s still too early (for officials numbers) because we’re going through drop-adds,” said EKU President Doug Whitlock. “We’re not still past the last day for new enrollment. While we can’t say for certainty what our new enrollment will be, all of the signs are that we’re going to have an enrollment increase this fall.”
While the new freshmen enrollment is approximately the same as last year (2,529 to 2,537), undergraduate enrollment was up 3.1 percent from 13,136 to 13,547 students.
Black student enrollment also increased 16 percent from 644 to 748 on the first day of classes this year compared with 2007’s opening day.
Hispanic student enrollment also jumped 29 percent from 124 to 160 students.
The biggest part of the growth appears to be in transfer and graduate students, Whitlock said.
Transfer enrollment was up 10 percent from 1,057 to 1,165 students.
“For several years now, our admissions folks and others on campus have been working hard with the state community and technical college system to make the transfer to Eastern a more seamless process,” Whitlock said. “We’ve got admissions counselors and advisors in place specifically for transfer students. I think we’re starting to see some of the results of that.”
The total graduate student enrollment went from 2,011 to 2,082 students, a 3.5 percent increase. f
The number of new graduate students increased 11 percent from 423 to 468 students.
“While it’s not all of it, I think the new doctoral program in educational leadership is a part of the increase in the graduate student enrollment,” the EKU president said.
Another area of enrollment increase is in online classes.
Online undergraduate enrollment was up 141 percent from 78 to 188 students while online graduate student enrollment went from 103 to 236 students, a 129 percent increase.
“There’s been steady increases in online enrollment here and other places over the years,” Whitlock said. “This is a fairly dramatic shift this time. We haven’t had a chance yet to really drill down into these numbers and see how many of these online enrollments are students who are taking classes only online or whether they are students taking classes in combination.
“If it turns out that we have a real increase in the number of purely online students, one inference we might draw is that gasoline prices are having some impact on that,” he said.
Other preliminary first-day enrollment statistics at EKU include:
• In-state undergraduate enrollment was up 3 percent from 11,321 to 11,685 students.
• In-state graduate enrollment was down 1 percent from 1,786 to 1,767 students.
• Out of state undergraduate enrollment was down 1 percent from 511 to 505 students.
• Out of state graduate enrollment was up 80 percent from 118 to 212 students.
A dramatic increase in enrollment at all state universities will be needed in order to meet the Council on Postsecondary Education’s Double the Number goal.
To raise Kentucky’s standard of living to the national average by 2020, CPE wants the state to double the number of college graduates living in Kentucky.
“There are two things that are going to be necessary for Eastern or any other institution to play the part we need to in (the Double the Numbers campaign),” Whitlock said. “One of them is increased enrollment. We need to enroll more than 20,000 students from a head count enrollment standpoint. We’re about 3,800 students short of that right now.”
“The other critical piece of it is retention,” he said. “We’ve got to improve our first to second year retention rate. Then, we need to improve our six-year graduation rate. We’ll be working on that.”

Bryan Marshall can be reached at bmarshall@richmondregister.com or 624-6691.