Enrollment is down 3.4 percent for the 2008-2009 school year, according to official 10-day figures.

Released by the president’s office Thursday, the total number of undergraduate and graduate students enrolled at NIU and all of its satellite campuses is 24,397 — 857 students less than last year.

Melanie Magara, assistant vice president of public affairs, said the drop in enrollment was due to the current economic status of the state and country.

“It’s the economy. Student financial aid is hard to come by. Student loans are hard to come by,” Magara said.

Because of this, Magara said the enrollment of community colleges close to NIU has expanded.

“Some students have chosen to start their NIU journey at community colleges,” Magara said.

Magara noted that the number of people applying to NIU and confirming their choice was higher last year. This continued after the Feb. 14 shootings, Magara said, meaning the tragedy did not have a significant affect on enrollment.

“They got to the point where they had to write a check and, for some reason, they could not do that,” Magara said.

The university releases information for different categories. These categories include new freshmen, new transfers, on-campus and off-campus undergraduates; and graduate students and law students. In every category, enrollment is lower this year compared to last year.

But not all the drops are significant. Compared to last year, NIU received seven fewer transfer students, while the College of Law lost only 28 students.

In addition, the grade point averages for new freshmen are up. Thirty-three percent of new freshmen have GPAs of 3.5 or better, compared with 25 percent last year. The average GPA among new freshmen jumped from 3.27 to 3.31.

But other catagories did take a hit, like off-campus enrollment. The biggest percentage drop was 14.2 percent for off-campus undergraduates. Only 362 undergraduates are commuting compared to last year’s 422.

The number of graduate students enrolled at NIU has gone down as well. Magara said the biggest drops are among graduate students seeking master’s degrees in education or health care-related fields, both of which have been hit hard by the economy. Some employers are unwilling to pay for their employees to go to graduate school either because of money issues or because they feel it is no longer needed.

NIU is not the only university seeing drops in enrollment. Western Illinois University’s Macomb campus is down 434 students, from 11,219 in fall 2007 to 10,785, according to a news release WIU sent out Wednesday. Southern Illinois University has 310 less at their Carbondale campus, down to 20,673 students, the Associated Press reported Sept. 4.

However, both WIU and SIU reported increases in other areas.

NIU did meet its target for new freshmen and transfers, said Vice Provost Earl “Gip” Seaver. He said the university aims to enroll between 5,000 and 5,100 new students every year. 5,059 new freshmen and transfers enrolled in NIU this year.

“We’ve been able to maintain a fairly stable enrollment,” Seaver said, adding that enrollment numbers change every year. According to an enrollment data book published by the NIU’s Office of Institutional Research, NIU has hovered around 25,000 total students since fall 2002.

Seaver said there are different effects for the university depending on enrollment. If enrollment is higher than predicted, there might not be enough classes for all of the students.

“We don’t want to bring students to NIU that can’t get into classes,” Seaver said.

However, a lower enrollment means lower revenue for the university. This means the university must balance the number of students that enter, stay and leave NIU, Seaver said.

The university also needs to look at why students choose to leave NIU before they graduate.

“As an institution, we need to respond to that,” Seaver said, adding that NIU may survey students who left on good academic standing.

In the past 30 years, the lowest enrollment NIU has ever experienced, according to 10-day figures, was in fall 1996, when NIU enrolled 21,609 students. The highest was in 1982, with 25,676 students.