By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
More first-year students stayed at BGSU for spring semester than a year ago.
The university’s 15-day census 92.1 percent of the more than 3,300 students who started in August 2022, returned to campus, 1.3 percent more than last year, and 1.5 percent over the average for the past three years.
Cecilia Castellano, Vice President for Enrollment Management and Student Outcomes , says that shows the university is bouncing back from the pandemic, which saw BGSU enroll smaller classes in 2020 and 2021. This is, she said, “a way forward to a new normal.” Enrollment did bounce back last fall.
Overall, the university is reporting a total enrollment of 17,939 students, a 1.8 percent drop from last year at this time. That was expected given the smaller classes and is a smaller decline than was anticipated in Castellano’s report to the Board of Trustees at the December meeting.
Total graduate program enrollment was down 4.9 percent. That was driven by a drop in eCampus and distance programs. Castellano said there was a surge in enrollment in those programs during the pandemic. Fewer students are signing up now to replace those graduating. Last spring, for example, the university graduated 200 students in the online Master of Business Administration program.
Face-to-face graduate enrollment, though, is up 2.4 percent in part, she said, because of the university’s new Doctor of Physical Therapy. The first cohort of students in fall includes 96 students. Those students come to campus twice a year for residencies and are included in the main campus’ graduate head count.
All indications point to more growth in fall. The number of applications and admitted students are up, and the number of prospective students who visit campus is up 4 percent over pre-pandemic levels.
Castellano credited the university’s new life design program, which encompasses the Michael and Sara Kuhlin Hub for Career Design and Connections and the Geoffrey H. Radbill Center for College and Life Design, with helping to attract students.
[RELATED: BGSU Life Design initiative gets a $13.5 million boost]
She said that when students learn what these centers can do “you see them light up.”
Life Design offers “an intentional method for helping them get to what’s going to be their college experience … and how they’re going to set themselves up for success.”
This kind of “value-added” program resonates with prospective students, and sets BGSU apart, she said.
The university’s increasing focus on programs addressing areas that prepare students for careers that are in high demand is also helping.
These include nursing and other health related fields, new engineering and manufacturing programs, construction management, aviation, exercise science, and pre-physical therapy and digital arts.
The university is also seeing a rebound in the number of international students. There are 777 this spring up from 585 a year ago. That includes 22 from Vietnam, a country Castellano has personally visited to recruit students.
BGSU also benefits from the larger community. She noted that Zillow recently ranked Bowling Green third in its list of top college towns.
It also ranks well for providing social mobility, for the quality of its online programs, and as a college more students say they would attend again if they had that decision to make now. All this is necessary, as BGSU and higher education in general face a declining number of high school graduates. The pandemic is perceived as pushing colleges’ and universities’ reckoning with this “demographic cliff” sooner than expected.
At the December Board of Trustees meeting , Chief Financial Officer Sheri Stoll offered this analysis: “In order to move forward successfully, BGSU will need to: 1) improve undergraduate enrollment, 2) consistently improve undergraduate retention, 3) improve targeted graduate enrollment, 4) manage year over year expense growth or be prepared for budget re‐allocations, and 5) prioritize bringing new, in‐demand programs on line as quickly as possible.”
Stoll credited President Rodney Rogers’ vision for launching those new programs. No other school has been as aggressive as BGSU in this regard.
