By Leah Wilkinson
Bellarmine recently missed its class of 2023 projection numbers by more than 30 first-year students.
Although admissions staff said they aren’t too concerned with this drop, it’s still a large enough deficit to raise
a few eyebrows. The projected figure was 650.
“We are actually currently at 617,” said Senior Vice President Dr. Sean Ryan. “Every year we set out to have a budget
goal and then we put together our best plans and then [we] kind of wait to see what students decide.”
Ryan said things change every year, regardless of how much the admissions staff try to project the numbers.
“Bellarmine is about five percent off where it originally aimed to be with its first-year students this year,” he
said. “It will fluctuate year to year.”
Ryan said he anticipates ending up at about 620 first-year students as the semester progresses. “If you actually
look at our overall enrollment reports, [they] actually show some decent growth,” he said.
That
growth Ryan is describing can be seen in Bellarmine’s “Ethnicity, Race
and Sex” report, which provides the first-year
class information of the last five years. An example of this growth can
be seen by looking at 2018’s first-year class, which had the largest
number of underrepresented minorities — 18 percent.
“It’ll
be interesting to see going forward what this coming year shows,” said
Tim Sturgeon, dean of undergraduate
admission. “We’ve hired even more recruiters to hit the road and try to
expand as part of our whole new strategic plan…so we’ll see what comes
from that.”
Sturgeon said it is often difficult to convince people to come to Bellarmine when other schools appear to offer a
large amount of financial aid, even though Bellarmine does as well.
Sturgeon said Bellarmine’s staff knew this was going to be an interesting year for admissions, due in large part
to the competition from state schools.
Lauren Keeling, senior associate dean of admission, agreed with Sturgeon.
“We
have a really high sticker price and that can be off-putting to
students, and this is something we try to market
to students,” she said. “Talk about the value, talk about the return on
their Bellarmine investment, what they get as being a Bellarmine
student, so we try to combat that early on, but it’s becoming more and
more prevalent that the state schools could be a
more affordable option for students.”
There is also a decline in the number of high school students in our region. “That’s something else that we’re seeing
in a general sense that’s sort of making the uphill battle a little bit steeper,” Keeling said.
While these two factors may be going against Bellarmine, Ryan said he believes things are moving in the right direction.
“Another
very positive area is that our first and second-year retention will
likely be the highest it’s been in seven
or eight years,” Ryan said. “If you look at the overall enrollment for
the university, there’s some growth there, but if you look at the
overall budget goal, as far as the revenue needed to provide students
with great academic programs and great opportunities
outside of class through RSOs and those things, we’re actually in a very
healthy position.”
Bellarmine saw its highest first-year headcount in 2015, with 707 students.
Ryan
said he understands the outsider’s perspective. “To the untrained eye
people get very focused on that total
first-year headcount, and they say ‘Oh my gosh! What’s going on with
Bellarmine?’” He said people shouldn’t be concerned by the university
being down from its projection.
But the question still remains: What is the Bellarmine admissions staff doing to ensure they don’t miss the projected
figure again?
According to Keeling, a lot of actions are being taken, most notably in development. The Bellarmine admissions staff
has added three new counselors, whose jobs are to meet with prospective students either at high schools or college fairs.
With this in mind, Bellarmine is much more likely to meet or surpass projection this next school year.
“My experience here has been that you go up a little, then go back, then go up,” Ryan said. He says it’s not a perfect line by any means, but that Bellarmine would like to eventually get to a steady 700 first-year students.