First-year admission to four-year colleges all over the country is down this year in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, but in the Golden Triangle, Mississippi University for Women is an exception to the trend.
Traditionally, MUW’s already small student population — just more than 2,700 undergraduates and graduates this semester — has had a notably small freshman class, relying instead on transfer students into its nursing programs, Admissions Director Iika McCarter said. Last year’s freshman class was about 170 students, she said, short of the university’s goal of 190. This semester, 201 freshmen enrolled at MUW.
“Generally our transfers are our bread and butter,” McCarter said. “That’s where our highest enrollment usually comes, but to have that turnaround for our freshman class was, of course, exciting for us. We worked really hard during the pandemic and especially when COVID first hit to make sure we were in constant contact with our incoming students.”
A study from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center released earlier this week reported a 3.9-percent decrease in undergraduate enrollment in both two- and four-year colleges nationwide from fall 2019 to 2020, with a 13.1-percent decrease in freshman enrollment.
The trend held true at Mississippi State University, said Assistant Vice President of Enrollment and the Registrar John Dickerson, though the university did see an increase in overall enrollment for the sixth straight year. MSU has 3,323 freshmen this year, down from 3,500 last year.
“I think the freshman decrease had a lot to do with the virus,” Dickerson said. “We had a number of students who indicated to us they were going to stay closer to home, at least for the fall and maybe the spring and kind of see how the virus went. (Some of them planned) to maybe enroll at their local community college and then come to us soon once … the situation got a little more normal, if that makes sense. … We certainly understood that.”
Still, he said he expects many of those students to attend MSU later after the pandemic is over. With the schools’ overall enrollment trending upward — the graduate programs in particular saw a 24.2-percent increase in enrollment since 2019 — he said he has no concerns the university won’t continue to grow next year.
“We look forward to having those students and a lot of others come to us as soon as they feel comfortable and ready to do so,” Dickerson said.
Both McCarter and Dickerson put the universities’ success at recruitment to increased virtual and hybrid options for students in order to keep them safe during the pandemic. They also switched recruitment efforts to online, offering virtual tours of campus once high schools began shutting down in the spring.
At MUW, McCarter said, admissions staff also worked closely with potential students making sure they understood just how the pandemic is affecting campus and classes.
“We just kind of kept that personal touch going with increasing phone calls and making sure that any questions that came up … we answered … and dispelled any myths about what our university was doing,” she said.
McCarter credited the university’s success at drawing in freshmen to both the ease with which instructors moved freshman general education courses online and the fact the university draws many of its freshman students from the Golden Triangle area, allowing those students to stay close to home during the pandemic.
That’s a good thing for the university for now, she said, because there was a significant decrease in the number of students who joined MUW’s Registered Nursing and Bachelor of Nursing programs while the pandemic is going on.
“Front-liners were affected more than anyone,” she said. “That included mainly nurses and doctors and people that are taking care of sick people. So as opposed to continuing education, some of them decided to stay working or they had to continue to work. That affected numbers where we normally would have had a huge increase.”
Like the freshmen at MSU, McCarter said she expects that trend to turn around once the pandemic is over, with more students enrolling in the nursing programs.
She was less certain about continuing to grow the trend of freshman enrollment, pointing out that as fewer high school students nationwide choose to go to college, the pool of potential freshmen to draw from is getting smaller.
“We know for sure that fewer high school students are going to college, so it’s still going to be a struggle,” she said. “I do believe that, as long as we continue … to educate high school students on the importance of getting a college education, that we can still stay around that number and keep within our goal. I don’t know if it will stay at an increase or if we level out or what, but our efforts will not change as it relates to recruiting those students.”
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 33 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 33 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
