Spring enrollment near record level

Enrollment for the spring semester is up 9.4% from 2009 with credit hours up 11%.

Enrollment rates for this semester are 7,812 students with 74,880 credit hours being taken.

"We do have record enrollment right now, all time record, both fall and spring," said Jeff Jones, vice chancellor of student affairs and enrollment management, "all of the IU campuses are up right now."

Jones believes part of the reason for high enrollment is the economy and that they are not competing with jobs. He feels the university is doing a better job of following up on potential students.

"We are also working hard on the financial aid pieces," said Jones. "[We] try to get our financial aid applied earlier in the cycle to help the students make decisions about being able to attend here."

International student retention is higher than average. IU South Bend retains international students better than domestic. Jones believes it is because they are more motivated.

"If a student is here from Mishawaka, and maybe they're not real motivated to be here, that's probably part of the reason," said Jones. "But if somebody's coming from China and their paying $20,000 a year in fees to be here, their probably pretty motivated to be successful."

Under the Reaching Higher program schools will no longer receive money based on how many students are enrolled but by how students complete courses.

"It's in our best interest to make sure that the students we accept here and the students who enroll here finish their classes," said Jones.

To help with this IUSB has initiatives to help students succeed.

"We have a program that we began two years ago called degrees of excellence," said Jones. "With the degrees of excellence funding we were able to put about $117,000 each of the last two years into special retention programs."

The money has been used to fund additional tutoring services and add peer mentors to the U100 classes. Additional sections have been added to the class as well as linked courses. They have also been able to fund book loans and provide additional math study software.

"We do know that students who take U100 have succeeded at a rate greater than those students with the same general characteristics that have not taken U100," said Jones

There has been an increase in non traditional students as well as traditional.

"We did increase in that area this year but we're still moving in a direction where we're getting more and more traditional age students, full time students," said Jones.

All of the Schools have increased on campus, but the School of the Arts has had the biggest increase. There have been a couple new degrees added in the School of the Arts, including a New Media degree and a Music Education degree.

Jones believes that some of the reasons students are attracted to IUSB is the faculty and the small size of the campus.