Collegian T he Cameron University
www.aggiecentral.com
Monday, September 30, 2019
Strategic investment:
Volume 101 Issue 3
Enrollment and Cameron budget Payton Williams Managing Editor @YoureSoVanya
This semester, Cameron University saw a drop in student enrollment of about three percent, and this drop has had an impact on the university budget. According to Cameron Vice President for Enrollment and Student Success Jerrett Phillips, the drop is representative of the types of enrollment drops happening at colleges and universities across the state of Oklahoma. “This is a relatively small decline,” Phillips said. “If you look at other universities in Oklahoma suffering a seven percent decline, we’re pretty much in the ballpark. We’re in good company.” However, Phillips also added that, at this point in the semester, a comparison of enrollment rates statewide is difficult to determine with certainty. “The official numbers that go to the regents and then get published out, don’t get released until much later in the semester,” Phillips said. “Our current information is mostly anecdotal. Unofficially, enrollment across the state is either flat or seeing a slight decrease.” The actual enrollment numbers at Cameron are determined by a census that is carried out about 30 days into the semester. The numbers can still fluctuate after the census has been conducted, but according to Phillips, those numbers don’t change much. “At about thirty days in, we get our first snapshot of what enrollment is like,” Phillips said. “That number is pretty solid. It doesn’t deviate much.”
The cause of the drop in enrollment, both at Cameron and statewide, can be attributed to several factors, but chief among them, according to Phillips, is a lack of new high school graduates in the state. “We’re all competing for the same freshmen,” Phillips said. “The high school graduation rates across the state are staying stagnant, they’re not moving.” The stagnation of high school graduation rates in the state of Oklahoma has been hurting college freshman enrollment rates for some time now. According to Phillips, this is the sixth consecutive year Cameron has seen a net drop in student enrollment. Most universities in the state, including Cameron have, in light of the lack of new incoming freshmen from high schools, begun to look very seriously at recruiting transfer students, a change which has made the search for transfer students in the state very nearly as competitive as the one for freshmen. To that end, Phillips spoke about some of the new things Cameron is attempting in order to boost enrollment. One of the chief solutions mentioned by Phillips was the shifting of Cameron’s recruitment focus closer to home. “My predecessor, before I came, really shifted our focus to the Dallas market,” Phillips said. “Unfortunately, those students just weren’t coming here. So we’ve realigned our market to where we think we’re stronger.”
Another important factor in enrollment, for Phillips, is the focus on concurrent enrollment, or enrollment in classes by high school students, at Cameron. “We have a very strong concurrent enrollment program,” Phillips said. “Which we think is very mission-central for us, it’s a good driver for students to be able to prepare for college and get ready.” Concurrent enrollment is currently up by eight percent at Cameron, despite the net drop in enrollment. Another focus for Phillips and the Office of Enrollment Management and Student Success is expanding enrollment in the University’s graduate program. “We made some strategic investment last year in graduate enrollment, to be able to focus on new graduate students,” Phillips said. “I’m pleased to announce that our numbers there have had a four to five percent increase.” While Cameron has been seeing a steady drop in enrollment, this particular semester has seen a less drastic drop than in previous years, and Phillips is optimistic about enrollment rates rising in the near future. “If you look at Southwest Oklahoma, and you look at the high schools where predominantly, those students come to Cameron,” Phillips said. “We’re going to be flat for about two more years, and then there’s a spike in the [high school] student population.” A spike in high school graduates usually translates to a boost in freshman enrollment for Cameron, and as for the drop in enrollment this year, while it isn’t ideal, according to Phillips, it was planned for. “From a budgeting standpoint,” Phillips said. “We knew those challenges were coming, and we built those challenges into the budget.”
Photo by Payton Williams
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