IUPUC and Ivy Tech Community College — Columbus, have seen a slight fall enrollment drop.
Ivy Tech said it has a 12.8% drop in its enrollment headcount from 2019. IUPUC has seen a 9.3% drop (counting both undergraduate and graduate students).
Randy Proffitt, Ivy Tech Columbus vice chancellor for enrollment services, included comparisons to about 20 other Ivy Tech campuses with his report to the Ivy Tech board. Campuses around the state are down anywhere from about 4% to 19% in enrollment numbers.
The Kokomo and Muncie campuses, which are similar to Columbus in terms of 2019 enrollment numbers, are down 11.1% and 12.3%, respectively, Proffitt said.
In terms of full-time equivalent numbers — for every 15 credit hours that students enroll in, one FTE is counted — Columbus is down 11.14% from 2019. Kokomo is down 17.51% and Muncie is down 12.17%. Other campuses included in Proffitt’s presentation saw decreases in full time equivalent numbers of about 6% to 21%.
“The silver lining in all of this is a relatively recent move to eight-week classes, so we still have our October start classes ahead of us,” Proffitt said. “So I’m optimistic that we’re going to make up ground.”
Ivy Tech Columbus’s second eight-week fall class session begins on Oct. 26.
Mark Schneider, director of K-14 initiatives at Ivy Tech, said that the school’s current dual enrollment headcount — that is, the number of high schoolers paying to take college courses — is close to what it was in 2019.
“That number ended up right at 190, which was almost a spot-on match from last year,” he said. “I was very disappointed we didn’t beat last year’s number. But literally two days before a certified nursing assistant class of 15 was supposed to start, there was a COVID-19 outbreak at the clinical site, and so that class had to be canceled.”
If not for the cancellation, the school would have beat last year’s dual enrollment number by about 7% to 8%, Schneider said.
After students enroll for the next eight weeks of classes and the spring semester, he expects a year-end number of about 235. Overall, he expects about 280 to 290 students overall from the K-14 area, including iGrad students who graduate, enter the workforce and then decide to take Ivy Tech courses.
Schneider said that the above numbers do not count dual credit students, which number at about 6,000, because these students take their classes for free and do not affect campus enrollment numbers.
Scott McIntyre, IUPUC’s new director of enrollment management, said that the largest drop in enrollment, both for the Columbus campus and the larger university system, was in new “beginner” students. The undergraduate beginning class for 2019 was 286; this year, it was 210.
Many students told school officials they were going to take a gap year or were “reassessing their college plans,” McIntyre said.
“The continuing students, what we’ve found statewide for all IU campuses, it was less than 1 percent off of the year before,” he said.
When it comes to dual credit — high school students taking classes for both high school and college credit — IUPUC usually sees about 20 to 22. This year, the campus has only seven. He said this was likely due to high schools going virtual.
While fall enrollment is down, McIntyre expects that students who delayed starting college in the fall of 2020 will look to start in spring or fall of 2021. He said that IUPUC is already seeing more applications from both transfers and first-year students for the spring semester.
“Fall of 2021, I think, system-wide within IU, we’re all anticipating more students and possibly record numbers, because we’ll have both our 2021 graduates and many of the 2020 class that are still trying to find their permanent location for college,” he said.
The IU system is going test-optional in 2021, which means that prospective students will not be required to include SAT and ACT scores in their application, McIntyre said.
“Across the country, we’re seeing a lot of colleges, in reaction to COVID and test centers being closed, going test-optional,” he said. “But this was something IU, system-wide, had been talking about for over a year now, probably 18 months ago, to roll out. And IU was the first Big Ten campus to go test-optional.”
According to IUPUI’s website, while including test scores in one’s application is optional, “admission to IUPUI is still selective, and regardless of the application path you take, your application will be reviewed holistically. This allows you to identify the materials you want to submit that best show your potential and tell the story of what you are capable of.”
“We want to make sure that we’re admitting students who will be successful at IUPUC. But I definitely feel that it’ll help total enrollment at Columbus and at the rest of the IU campuses, because any time you can reduce a barrier to enrollment, and provide access, it just helps students find their way to higher ed,” McIntyre said.
The IUPUC admission process also now includes a self-reported component. When students apply, they can state their GPA and will not need to include their official transcript until they “plan to enroll or schedule classes.”
Ideally, IUPUC’s target student population is about 1,500, he said.
“We feel that’s a point where we continue to deliver personal attention, and really help students in more of a small, personalized setting,” McIntyre said.
[sc:pullout-title pullout-title=”By the numbers” ][sc:pullout-text-begin]
Ivy Tech Community College – Columbus
2020 enrollment headcount: 1,955
2019 enrollment headcount: 2,241
2020 full-time (15 credit hours) equivalent: 1,164
2019 FTE: 1,310
Indiana University Purdue University Columbus
*2020 total headcount on campus: 1,275
*2019 headcount: 1,406
*Fall 2020 total credit hours: 15,531
*Fall 2019 total credit hours: 17,010
*2020 FTE (12 credit hours): 1,047
*2019 FTE: 1,143
Fall 2020 new undergraduate class: 286
Fall 2019 new undergraduate class: 210
Fall 2020 graduate students: 93
Fall 2019 graduate students: 74
*Figures with asterisk include both graduate and undergraduate numbers.
[sc:pullout-text-end]
