Enrollment revenue down $7.3 million

The final freshman enrollment numbers released Wednesday showed a decrease of 768 students. The 2 percent drop in enrollment will leave IU-Bloomington $7.3 million dollars short of its predicted revenue.\nThe $7.3 million dollar shortfall will force non-academic expenditures to drop by 2.3 percent across the board which will tap into most schools' reserve money.\n"We've known since last spring that there was going to be a shortfall," IU-Bloomington Interim Chancellor Ken Gros Louis said. "At the time it looked like as much as 1,300 students, so we planned then and informed people of what to expect by way of budgeting for reduced expenditures or for units to not receive as much income."\nStudents who were accepted to IU and chose to go elsewhere were given surveys by the Office of Admissions on why they chose another university. Of the surveys received, 27 percent of in-state applicants and 28 percent of out-of-state cited a lack of financial aid as their main reason.\nWith the switch to Peoplesoft software, many employees needed time to adjust. The adjustment, which Vice Chancellor for Enrollment Services Don Hossler compared to learning to drive a car, resulted in many applicants receiving their financial aid letter six to eight weeks late.\nAlso, a number of other applicants received the wrong aid package and weren't informed of the mistake until several weeks later, Gros Louis said.\n"It wasn't a problem with the software, but rather a problem with the complexity of the new modules in the Peoplesoft system," Gros Louis said. "It's nobody's fault, in fact many people worked seven days a week and 10 hours a day to get everything done."\nBy the time the applicants received their correct information, many may have already decided to attend school elsewhere, Hossler said.\nDespite the decrease in tuition revenue, Gros Louis and Hossler both pointed out some of the silver lining to this enrollment cloud. \n"Preliminary indicators show that diversity is looking much stronger and that the quality of student, in terms of class rank and SAT score, may be better," Gros Louis said.\nThe number of transfer students also seems to be on the rise as transfer numbers may have hiked by as much as 10 percent, Hossler said. With Indiana's recent promotion for community colleges, recruitment continues to be more successful at that level.\nThe enrollment drop has also led the Office of Admissions to add additional staffing in order to become a little more personalized.\n"As the saying goes, we've been staffed more for wholesale, not retail," Hossler said.\nOverall, the only effects of the drop will be a decrease in tuition money as state revenue shouldn't shift because IU already is a "mature campus," Hossler said. Residential Programs and Service also predicted a drop of over $2.5 million dollars from their proposed budget.\nAccording to Wednesday's press release, the overall student enrollment stands at 37,821 for this year, a 768 student drop from last year's 38,589. That number, however, does include transfers and freshmen from last year that didn't gain sophomore status.\nAll IU campuses including Bloomington saw an overall decrease of just 0.6 percent. \n-- Contact staff writer Brian Janosch at bjanosch@indiana.edu.