Northern Illinois University just released its fall enrollment numbers. WNIJ education reporter Peter Medlin sat down with Sol Jensen, NIU’s VP for Enrollment Management, Marketing and Communications, for the details…
Peter Medlin (PM): Total enrollment at the university is 15,811 students. It's down about 1.7% from last year. The NIU release called it “stable” enrollment. What's your biggest takeaway from the numbers?
Sol Jensen (SJ): Yeah, I think we're relatively stable with enrollment. We’re happy where we're at. I think when we look at last year, that was a banner year. We had largest classes in a decade and largest re-enrollments in 25 years.
Not that we're not trying to continue to grow, but I think, relatively, where we're at right now with high school graduates going down and some of our efforts shifting a bit onto more of the online and adult space, I think we're very excited about where we stand. [It’s] still a very strong freshman class with strong numbers, but also the highest-ever GPA recorded in our history. Our residence halls are full. We're highest in a decade there too.
(PM): A lot of people in education talk about this "enrollment cliff," that there are just fewer traditional college-age students coming down the pipeline, which could contribute to continued enrollment challenges. How significant is the pure demographic math? You mentioned online education. I'm curious about some of those spaces you see as potential growth areas. I saw NIU had record online enrollment this fall.
(SJ): We did have record enrollment [in online education]. That's our second consecutive year. I would also add we had another record enrollment year in our law school. We also had another record year for our honors program. So, again, not just bringing in any students, but just spectacular students who are exceptional academically.
The numbers and the data are real. The number of students graduating from high school is absolutely on the decline in the state and across the country. Although I don't think it's impacted universities too much yet, because it's only been a year or two, certainly as we look forward over the next five to 10 years, we could see some more significant decline there, which is why it's also important to pivot to some of the adult learners and online opportunities we have at NIU. I do think we are poised to continue to see growth there as well over the next decade or so.
(PM): One other area I wanted to ask about is international students. Obviously, colleges across the country have been seeing significant declines over the past year or two. What are things looking like at NIU, especially when it comes to international graduate students?
(SJ): Almost all of our international students, short of about 100 at the undergraduate level, are at the graduate level. They are an important aspect of our community. They add vibrancy and diversity and different cultures to our campus. We have seen some declines there. For us, it started even at the application stage, where we saw some pretty significant declines even in international students applying to NIU, all the way to seeing about a 16% total decline in international enrollment from this year compared to last year.
But again, if I think if you take it a step further, we've seen about a 36% decline over the past three years. So, we've seen that shift happening over the past couple of years. It's challenging with some of the legislation but also students getting visas and other impacts having international students potentially consider other countries.
(PM): I'm curious about the larger context of enrollment trends. I know in Illinois, for example, just looking at the state public universities, University of Illinois - Chicago and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign both had enrollment records this fall. I know Illinois State did last year.
NIU, like you said, had some big increases, especially in new freshmen, last year. NIU's enrollment is down 17% over the past decade. How are you guys feeling, generally, about where you're at compared to some of the other state schools?
(SJ): Well, we don't compare ourselves to the other state schools. I think it's important that we know who we are, who we serve, and what our mission is.
(PM): They are competition, though, right? In some ways?
(SJ): Obviously, there are students looking at all the different institutions but, in terms of numbers, we're all schools with different missions, and who we serve is very different. We primarily serve the northern Illinois region. If you look at our student population, 92-95% come from the northern Illinois counties. We know that's who we are, that's who we serve, that's where we spend the majority of our time recruiting and developing those relationships.
Going back, I think we're in a great place. I don't think it's fair to comment on where we were 10 years ago. I think what's important is if you look at over the last four or five years, which I think is still a relatively good period of time, we're still the second-highest enrollment we've been in the last five years. We've been really stable. We've been around the same number, and that number is good for us as an institution and how we can continue to serve our students in the best capacity.
(Editor's note: this interview was edited for clarity and brevity)
