A loss of students at SIUC this year has many wondering what that'll mean for the school's already fragile bottom line - but administrators say they'll do the best they can with what they have as belt-tightening continues.
SIUC Chancellor Rita Cheng says fewer students will mean fewer tuition dollars coming in, so her office is looking at ways to trim costs: "Mostly in the non-academic units, or in the non-faculty or staff support services. But we are also looking very closely at course scheduling, class size, our academic policies that allow students to go through our system in a rational and efficient way." Cheng says a hiring freeze is still in place, and many of the vacancies left by retiring employees will help to absorb the loss of funds.
Meanwhile, A week after announcing a decline of nearly one-thousand students at SIUC, Cheng says they are still evaluating the numbers - but are finding bright spots among the troubling data. SIUC is not alone in reporting lower enrollment this semester... but Cheng says it's the details in the data that make her more optimistic: "Most of the downturn in our sister institutions is driven by pretty significant downturns in new, first-time freshmen. That's not the case at SIU. Our enrollment decline is really driven by the current classes that are smaller. Our freshman class did go down a bit from last year, but it's up overall since 2010, and the decline, overall, wasn't driven by those freshman classes." Cheng says a big drop in transfer students helped to drive down the enrollment number this fall, adding to smaller junior and senior classes. She says keeping the new student numbers up will be a big challenge over the next several years, as competition gets even tougher.
SIUC lost 970 students this fall compared to the same time last year. Cheng says schools all over the state are hearing from prospective students who are choosing community colleges or other avenues to save money because higher education is so expensive.
