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Poshard's response to SIUC enrollment drop mixed

BY ADAM TESTA, The Southern

Thursday, September 4, 2008 7:19 PM CDT

CARBONDALE — Southern Illinois University President Glenn Poshard said a decline of more than 300 undergraduate students on the Carbondale campus since last fall disappoints him, but he also saw positive signs in enrollment figures.

Students continuing from their sophomore to junior year represented the largest loss, with the number of continuing students entering their junior year falling by 210 and the number of incoming transfer students dropping by 132, according to 10-day enrollment figures released Thursday.

Those students, representing SIUC’s class of 2010, entered the university as a smaller freshman class than the one before them, so that trend will likely continue through their entire college careers, said Victoria Valle, assistant vice chancellor for enrollment management.

Other colleges and universities have also been capitalizing on partnerships with community colleges throughout the state, which may attribute to a portion of the transfer decrease, Poshard said.

“We’re competing with so many colleges right now at the community college level, it’s difficult for us to expect the number of transfers we used to have,” he said.

While retention between the sophomore and junior year continues to be an issue, the total numbers of freshmen and sophomores shows progress in retaining new students, Poshard said. Freshmen numbers increased 119, while sophomore figures grew by 38.

With regard to geography, the number of SIUC students from the Chicagoland area increased by about 300, while the number of students from Southern Illinois dropped by about 225, the largest geographic loss in the state.

Terry Clark, chairman of the marketing department and executive director of Barking Dawg Productions, said he’d like to believe efforts by Barking Dawg, SIUC’s student-run marketing group, and Valle’s office contributed to the northern Illinois increase.

As for the decrease in Southern Illinois students turning to SIUC, Poshard said competition like Murray State University and Southeast Missouri State University offering in-state tuition may contribute.

“We don’t have Kentucky, Indiana and Missouri coming in and targeting students in northern Illinois,” he said.