Western Illinois University is reporting a total fall enrollment of 6,332 at its campuses in Macomb and Moline.
A few months ago, the administration projected enrollment might be in the range of 5,500 to 6,000.
“We definitely attribute where we ended up at to returning student retention rates,” said Justin Schuch, Interim Vice President for Student Success.
“We’ve seen a strong transfer student retention rate, and then our first-year student retention rate from last year also rose a little bit there.”
He said the focus now is on helping students remain at WIU. He said they’re making sure students have the support they need to be successful in the classroom, and they’re also making sure students feel connected to the university outside of the classroom.
“We know that if they’re connected they do significantly better. So this is right now our busy time to make sure that they are getting connected and engaged with each other,” Schuch said.
He said they look to see if students are attending events on campus, using their meal plan, and utilizing tutoring support services.
They follow up with students who are not doing those things and discuss the importance of using services and connecting with the university and the community.
A downward trend
While enrollment exceeded projections, it’s still down from one year ago, following the pattern seen at WIU during much of the past decade, with the exception of a slight increase in enrollment between 2021 and 2022.
Schuch is not sure if this summer’s news of the layoffs of tenured, tenure-track, and non-tenure track faculty at Western had any impact on enrollment.
“We’ve been active making sure students know their experience should not be impacted by some of the things we need to do to be financially stable,” he said, adding that issues with FAFSA likely harmed freshman enrollment numbers.
“We believe pretty firmly that drove more decisions students made than other things.”
He said about 84 percent of WIU students use some form of financial aid.
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