NIU could reassess its Vision 2020 goals following another semester of falling enrollment.

According to figures released Wednesday, total enrollment fell 3.3 percent to 21,138. Fall 2012 enrollment was 21,869. Goals for Vision 2020, a set of university initiatives put forth by former President John Peters, put NIU’s fall 2013 goal enrollment at 24,411. NIU missed the mark in fall 2012, too, when the goal enrollment was 24,051.

“I’ll say this: I’ve been here a couple of months and we’re under new leadership with President [Doug] Baker, and I think as an institution this is a great time for us to reassess where we are with enrollment and where we want to be in the next five or 10 years,” said Eric Weldy, who started as vice president of Student Affairs and Enrollment Management July 1. “I don’t want to identify a specific number of where we would like to be.”

Increases: Freshmen, Honors

Fall enrollment saw a slight increase in freshman enrollment, with 2,679 freshmen — 15 more than enrolled last year — and the Honors Program welcomed 217 freshmen and 99 transfers. There are 1,039 students enrolled in the program.

“To be able to report an increase in freshman and graduate school enrollment in the midst of a national downturn in college enrollment trends is gratifying, yet we have significant work ahead,” Baker said, according to NIU. He is expected to lay out “new strategic imperatives for the NIU community” at his Nov. 13 inaugural address.

Fewer Transfers

Despite those gains, transfer enrollment declined by 1.7 percent. Weldy said the decline comes from a variety of factors, including increasingly competitive community colleges in Illinois. Those schools continue to offer students “more than just the two-year associate’s degree,” Weldy said.

“That is an issue. It’s very competitive, so we’re not just competing against other four-year institutions,” he said. “We’re competing against community colleges for some of these same students because the community colleges are doing more.”

To combat that, Weldy said NIU will strengthen its relationships with community colleges and will make the transfer process easier by making NIU’s application process “seamless” and accepting transfer credits.

“I think we’ve done a good job, but I think we can do even better,” he said.

In order to “do even better,” Weldy said he is looking at NIU’s scholarship offers, among other things.

“I want to spend a little bit more time kind of assessing our strengths and weaknesses and really lay out an enrollment plan as an institution,” Weldy said. “That’s my thoughts and regards to Vision 2020 and the 30,000 student goal.”

‘Another Problem or Issue’

NIU attributed the drop in enrollment to the decline in transfer students, “a declining number of high school graduates in the state … a sizeable graduating class in spring 2013 and student retention.”

Weldy said NIU will work on retaining more students.

“Just our own retention efforts on campus, I think we need to look at how we provide services for students, how we support students as they go their collegiate or academic programs on campus,” Weldy said. “The retention issue would be another problem or issue that has impacted enrollment.”

The slight increase in freshman enrollment comes in the wake of January’s Orange Bowl game, when NIU became the first MAC school to compete in a BCS bowl. The university had received more than 18,000 freshman applications by late March, a record for NIU, according to an NIU Today news release.

“It’s a different generation of students than when I was applying to school at college 20 years ago,” Weldy said. “One thing that’s different with this new generation of students is that even though, for example, even though they may apply or are accepted, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are going to attend orientation. Just because they attend orientation doesn’t mean they are going to register here on campus.”

Across the State

The University of Illinois-Urbana reported a 5.7 percent increase in its freshman class this year, bringing the school’s total enrollment to a record 43,400.

Southern Illinois University-Carbondale saw a 5 percent drop in total enrollment from last year, though university officials attributed the decline to a drop in transfer enrollment, as the schools has its largest freshman class in 20 years.

Total enrollment at Illinois State University also fell from 20,502 in fall 2012 to 20,272 this year, and the university reported a 3.5 percent drop in freshman enrollment.

Enrollment at Eastern Illinois University fell from 10,417 to 9,775, and Western Illinois University reported a drop from 12,205 to 11,707.