The enrollment at Southern Illinois University’s flagship campus is down nearly 1,300 students from spring of last year.
The official 10-day enrollment for the SIU Carbondale campus stands at 17,152. That’s down from 18,442 in January of 2012 . This semester's official enrollment is also down by nearly 1,700 students from the Fall semester. University officials say there were a large number of December graduates that contributed to the decline. Chancellor Rita Cheng says she is pleased with the results given that slightly more than 1,900 students graduated at the end of December. University officials say spring enrollment is about 83% of the fall count.
Cheng says change is happening slowly but steadily. She says the university has received nearly 12,000 new freshman applications for Fall 2013. Cheng says housing contracts are the best indicator of enrollment. She says housing contracts for Fall 2013 are about 20% ahead of this time last year.
Cheng says full-year projections are made with the official fall enrollment, so no budget or staffing adjustments will be made for the remainder of the spring semester.
Overall, SIU-C enrollment has dropped by more than 2,600 students since the Fall of 2011.
