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Showing posts from March, 2023

Enrollment? It's complicated

I don't mean the business of enrollment is complicated (although it is, at times); I mean talking about enrollment is complicated.  When I get on the elevator with someone, the question is always, "how is enrollment looking?" Unless everything is wonderful, or everything is awful, there is really no answer to that, because even at one institution, enrollment is made up of several different types of enrollment: New first-year, new transfers, overall graduates, overall undergraduates. returning students, full-time, part-time, students in different colleges, and, if you work at a public institution, residents and nonresidents. There are ebbs and flows in all those streams, but of course, the average elevator ride is not long enough to explain that all. So, too, our national discussions about enrollment are complicated.  You have heard about the enrollment crisis, of course, but when you dive down, you see it's really mostly a challenge at our nation's community colle