Due to COVID-19, Winthrop University undergraduate enrollment is the lowest it has ever been while graduate enrollment numbers have risen for the Fall 2020 semester.
“We do not have official enrollment numbers for this semester, but we are hovering at about 5,400 (total undergraduate and graduate) which is down about 5 percent from this time last year,” Winthrop Registrar Gina Jones said in an email. “However, our graduate student enrollment is up about [2] percent, most likely due to our fully online programs,” adding that there are about 4,250 undergraduate students and 1,120 graduate students enrolled.
However, retention rates for undergraduate enrollment have stayed consistent despite the pandemic and dwindling economy.
“I hired the new dean of university college and gave him the title of vice provost for student success because a key charge in his position was to really work on retention and retention is a key part of enrollment,” Winthrop Provost Adrienne McCormick said. “Each year our retention rate is between 70 and 75 percent. We lose a quarter to a third of the students we recruit annually. We spent the whole year as academic leaders identifying very particular strategies we can use in each of our units. We have seen real results from all of the different efforts that we made.”
“We created a bachelor of professional studies program…it is an adult degree completion option. So this is trying to generate new pools of students,” McCormick said. “We also are looking at the overall program mix so what programs do we not have that are really skyrocketing job opportunities and we want to add those to the mix. So things that really help us draw in more students that are in areas where we have existing strengths. So that is where we are focusing our efforts in terms of recruiting new students in.”
McCormick also added that the university is looking at new ways to communicate with students effectively through a texting platform with artificial intelligence capabilities. This is so students can be directly communicated with with questions they may have and can maintain retention and grow enrollment.
Along with this, in order to ease the undergraduate and the graduate admissions process during the pandemic, ACT, SAT and GRE test requirements were optional due to the lack of administered tests that
were supposed to take place. While undergraduate enrollment has decreased there is a trend of growth for graduate enrollment.
“It stems from three primary causes. We launched 100 percent online programs. This is our third year with them and they have been scaling [and] building enrollment over the last few years,” Dean of Graduate, Online and Extended Education Jack DeRochi said. “We have seen a nice increase in our campus base graduate programs as well. This stems from some changes that our programs have made to make it easier for students to apply and enroll.”
“I would also say a downward economy does sometimes help graduate enrollment. That’s not just at Winthrop that is everywhere,” DeRochi said. “Typically troublesome economies make folks think about ‘I need a graduate degree so I am prepared for my next steps.’”
