UND counts its students
The first day head count at UND was released on Wednesday and it shows a very small decline from last fall. I can't find an official news release, but I think the drop was less than 100 students. I'm sure the Herald will have a story in today's paper.
School officials don't seem to be too worried about the small drop. They say that larger than anticipated graduating classes the past three semesters and tougher admission standards for applicants are the likely cause. Still, the number of incoming freshmen this year is larger than what the school had been aiming for. With the tougher admission standards, UND hopes that it is getting better freshmen that are more committed to college and that will stay at the University until they graduate. If that's the case, it's great to see growth among the number of freshmen coming to UND since they will hopefully stay at UND for the full four (or five, or six, or seven, or eight...) years of their undergraduate career.
I would like to see a growing student body each year at UND, but I don't mind seeing the University become a little more selective in who it admits. UND is already literally exploding at the seams and the campus would simply not be able to house that many more students at this time. Hopefully the huge new parking ramp, the new student housing, and other campus construction projects will give the University more room to grow in the future. I really have no doubt that UND will continue an upward climb for the foreseeable future. We just have way too much going for us to imagine any other kind of evolution.
By the way, the initial first day head count is often different than the "official" head count released in a few weeks. Stay tuned to see how we "officially" add up.
I hope they remembered to count me...
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3 comments:
I'm hoping they will finish at or above the 13,000 mark again. Having higher standards at the university is a good thing though, it does (and did) cut down on the enrollment the last couple of years, but academicly, it's good. I believe one of the new standards was that a person has to have at least a 19 on their ACT, before they needed an 18.
Enrollment at NDSU on the other hand continues to climb every year, I don't believe they have the higher standards in place at SU, I believe they still require an 18 on the ACT. Now, one other point I'd like to bring up and please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong here because I'm not 100% sure on this, but a few years ago wasn't it in the Grand Forks Herald that as far as enrollments at NDSU and UND, that NDSU was counting students that are enrolled at MSU and Concordia College but that were taking some classes at NDSU? where as UND doesn't count students at other colleges that might be taking some classes through UND? Like I said, thought I read that a few years back.
I can tell you that each campus counts students differently. I've always felt that the university system should define proper counting methods. Mayville saw growth in numbers by counting high school students taking classes. It's how you manipulate the numbers.
It would be interesting to see a comparison of total credit hours being taken [after the last day to add-3 weeks in]. While this is not a direct number of students, it would be a fair way of comparing schools and also year-to-year changes. Even more interesting would be that number compared to the total credit hours completed each semester. It was my experience that in many classes [especially freshman and sophomore level ones] 25-50% of the students drop the class [and this is not even counting those that stop coming and flunk, but don't officially drop]. No wonder it takes many of them 5-7 years to get a degree!
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