With the fall semester underway, many new students throughout the university are arriving. Through incoming first year, transfer, international or graduate students, the number of these students is looking up, however some areas are having troubles.
Currently, the numbers for admitted students coming to campus is still in a state of flux. Many students are still registering and dropping out as of right now according to Keith Ramsdell, vice president of enrollment management and marketing.
“Trying to give firm numbers at this point is almost impossible,’’ Ramsdell said. “We are still working with every student individually, trying to make sure that we can make it affordable.”
Ashland University has various distinctives such as the Ashbrook Scholars Program, Honors Program, certain major programs and sports that draw student interest.
“The biggest predictor of whether a student will choose AU is distance from home,” Ramsdell said.
According to Ramsdell, these distinctives are what set Ashland apart, which pulls focus to AU’s motto of the Accent on the Individual.
Ramsdell predicts the amount of incoming first year students will be roughly the same as the previous academic year’s freshman class.
Originally, according to Ramsdell, these numbers were projected to rise, however there have been some struggles for college enrollment. These struggles are not limited to AU, instead affect universities nationwide.
“Research is telling us that this will be the first fall in decades that less than 50% of high school graduates will go directly to college,” he added.
The last time this occurred was during the 1980s. There are a few factors that have caused this rate to prevent high school graduates from going onto college.
“In 2008, when the great recession hit, the birth rate in this country dropped overnight,” mentioned Ramsdell. “That means that 18 years later, the number of college-bound 18 year olds is going to drop overnight.”
With the COVID-19 pandemic hitting the nation in 2020, it brought upon a similar decline in the number of college-bounds sooner than expected with students not knowing what to expect next.
Ramsdell is predicting that the incoming class will most likely end being flat, but the transfer students, he expects,will be down.
“From 2010 to 2017, community college enrollment fell by 14.7% and by an additional 13% in the last two years,” he added.
Four-year universities mainly receive the majority of their transfer students from community colleges. Ashland University’s are declining because fewer students are going to community colleges.
The university is also struggling in a similar way with various graduate programs.
“After Covid, some graduate programs are doing very well in enrollment, others are doing very poorly,” Ramsdell said.
The top two areas in the entire country that are predicted to be struggling with enrollment are healthcare and education. According to Ramsdell, roughly 55% of educators are thinking of leaving the teaching profession and many of them are not thinking of going into higher education.
This is currently a giant hurdle to the admissions and enrollment team at Ashland University. The goal is now to focus on the Ashland motto with focus on the individual and to be ready for when the student is ready to enter graduate school.
COVID-19 also impacted the enrollment of international students at AU significantly.
“We are doing everything we can to increase our international population back to levels that are pre-Covid,” Ramsdell continued. “Our admitted international students, those numbers are really, really up this year, but the issue is that there’s a massive backlog of visas.”
The issue is that the international students are admitted to the university, but cannot get here because of not having their visa.
The applications submitted for international students is up 152%, admitted is up 276%, deposits are up 424%, but there are only 37 students that have visas.
International enrollments are predicted to be up for the next school year once all the visas have gone through and been processed.
Ashland University is currently working on future plans to help increase enrollment throughout all students and hopes that will turn around in a positive direction.