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St. Cloud State University
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Enrollment on track
By Cathy Kropp
Published:
Thursday, September 25, 2003
Media Credit: Ryan Henry
Every morning students fill the Atwood Mall while walking between classes. This year SCSU has met its enrollment goals for the 2003-04 school year.
Fall enrollment at SCSU is right on track, reaching university set goals in both retention and new applicant numbers.
In 1998, the university devised a plan to keep the total number of students within a set range of 15,000 to 16,000. Enrollment for this semester's classes is at 15,444.
With budget cuts affecting the university, students have seen their class size increasing. These enrollment limits are set so that class size will stay at a manageable level and current students will continue to have easy access to both facilities and professors.
These limits are being closely followed, as applications for enrollment are coming in at the highest rate in two years. In response to the swelling numbers, the University developed a waiting list for incoming and transfer student applicants.
According to provost and vice president for Academic Affairs, Dr. Michael Spitzer, everyone on the waiting list was offered admission this semester.
Graduate programs have also seen an increase of 12.3 percent, with 1,355 students enrolled this year compared to last year's 1,206.
The school of Graduate Studies has expanded its program in the last two years, which is one of the major reasons cited for the increase in enrollment.
The number of international students has risen by 21. Including those in the English as a Second Language Program, there is a total of 915 international students. The number of domestic minority students has also climbed, with these students now making up 4 percent of the total student body.
One of the goals of the University was to keep the number of students in these areas rising.
The University is currently developing plans to help continue recruiting minority students. Mentoring programs and additional academic support are some of the areas being discussed as tools to encourage minority students to enroll.
"Our goal is to have the number of international and minority students on campus reflect the numbers in the community," Spitzer said.
Initially there were concerns that the number of international students would drop after the September 11 attacks due to the increased security and difficulty that students were having obtaining their visas. According to Spitzer, SCSU has not been as hard hit as other schools in the area by these problems.
"Other institutions have chosen not to enroll new international students due to these problems," Spitzer said. "We have not made a decision yet, but we have not experienced those levels (of decrease)."
SCSU has also seen an increase in the retention of first-year students. This year, the number of returning first-year students has risen 2.6 percentage.
Retention is another area that has been addressed by the university in the last couple of years due to falling numbers. According to Spitzer, a more complete plan of action will be devised in the following months to address this and other enrollment areas. These plans will compliment those already in use.
"Right now there is just a general awareness that this is a goal we are working toward," Spitzer said.
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