Overall enrollment drops 4.1%; Freshman enrollment up 2%

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Jason Svoboda

Jason Svoboda

The Bird Level
Administrator
From the article:
Similar to last year, freshman enrollment is up at Indiana State University this fall, while overall enrollment has declined to 8,305 total students, about a 4.1% decrease.

Last fall, ISU’s headcount enrollment was 8,658.

Total enrollment is impacted by smaller classes progressing through their four years at ISU, a trend expected to continue for a few years, said Deborah Curtis, ISU president.

But she also pointed to the number of first-time, full-time freshmen increasing both last year and this year.

ISU has 1,568 first-time, full-time freshman this fall, up 2% from last year. That represents a 10% increase the last two years.

The increase in freshmen “is a tremendous amount of hard work,” Curtis said Wednesday while meeting with reporters. “The environment is certainly challenging out there … We’re pleased to see that growth.”
Click to expand...

www.tribstar.com

Indiana State University sees freshman enrollment growth, but overall 4% decline

Similar to last year, freshman enrollment is up at Indiana State University this fall, while overall enrollment has declined to 8,305 total students, about a 4.1% decrease.
www.tribstar.com www.tribstar.com

Good thing we're a small liberal arts college... you know, Harvard of the Midwest.

Previous data can be found here:

Enrollment Summary - Institutional Research

irt2.indstate.edu irt2.indstate.edu
 
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Im glad Curtis is giving the expectation of declining enrollment in the future. so when it happens it was a "tremendous amount of hard work to only have ___% in enrollment drop".

Instead of taking responsibility (whether it's her fault or not) and try to reverse it with creativity and outside the box thinking. She just accepts it. What a waste of space
 
Look, I can’t stand Curtis as much as the next person; however, an increase in Freshmen enrollment (albeit very small) is progress. We’re not going to be able to backfill upperclassmen all that easily so the best path forward is making sure we get plenty of Freshmen on campus.

Nobody should be doing a victory lap with these statistics, but it is still better than it has been.
 

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She’s coming to speak at an Alumni happy hour in Chicago in October. I’ll see her there! I wondering if she’ll be open to answering questions
 
Out of curiosity..what percentage of the incoming freshman class are athletes? Athletes on scholly?
 

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Flying under the radar amid all of this is Deb's head of enrollment for the past four-and-a-half years, Jason Trainer, who, last time I checked, makes $160,000/year.

Jason talks and talks and talks, but he's as full of it as Deb and avoids accountability because that would be tantamount to Deb admitting she's something other than an "influential leader" with a handle on everything.

One year, Jason bragged about applications being up by a lot. The next year, when they were way down, he said it was by design. The guy puts on a slick annual dog and pony show for the docile trustees and just keeps collecting his money as enrollment tanks.

I looked at my notes from his Feb 2022 dog and pony show. Jason said ISU would have 2,000 first-time, full-time students in Fall 2023. The actual number: 1,568. He also said there would be 1,000 transfer students and 725 grad students. We don't know those actual numbers. ISU doesn't post them promptly anymore on the institutional research page.

This is the problem. Nobody holds ISU's administration to its previous claims. Deb, especially, is allowed to just say anything and continue her thin-skinned, egotistical disaster of a presidency.

Oh, and Jason supervises ISU's pathetic Marketing department, led by the clueless puppet Shonta Sellers, who, last time I checked, makes six figures. ISU has posted only ONCE since July 28 to the school's 48K followers on Facebook. As I've noted before, Deb spent $3 million with an Indianapolis marketing agency from April 2021 to April 2023.

Folks, the Debster, my namesake, just wants to get to the finish line of her contract in June 2025 and feed that enormous ego ---an ego based on what, I'll never know -- one last time with a portrait and testimonial dinner.
 
treeman said:
Im glad Curtis is giving the expectation of declining enrollment in the future. so when it happens it was a "tremendous amount of hard work to only have ___% in enrollment drop".

Instead of taking responsibility (whether it's her fault or not) and try to reverse it with creativity and outside the box thinking. She just accepts it. What a waste of space
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UT announced record enrollment this week.
 

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Just curious, are there any significant positives coming out of the university right now (aside from baseball and basketball, and sports in general)? To an outside observer paying a little bit of attention, ISU seems to be in its waning years. It's not real surprising since we've never had competent leadership.
 
bent20 said:
Just curious, are there any significant positives coming out of the university right now (aside from baseball and basketball, and sports in general)? To an outside observer paying a little bit of attention, ISU seems to be in its waning years. It's not real surprising since we've never had competent leadership.
Click to expand...

There are specific programs that are really, really good. Unfortunately, you would never know it unless you're within the ecosystem.

For example, our President Scholars and folks in the Honors College on most years are absolute beasts of students that go on and do amazing things. But you would never know it because that isn't how they've chosen to market the school.
 
Debster do you remember anything about an EETC certification program for displaced Duke and Coal company workers a few summers ago?
 
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