Enrollment up, dorms nearly filled

This archived article was written by: Heather Myers

Have you noticed that there are quite a few more people living on campus this year than in the past? You should have.
According to Brad King, vice president of institutional advancement and student services, there have never been this many students living in the dorms. “There are only about 10 free rooms this year, whereas there were over 50 empty rooms last year and near 100 the year before that.” The reason there were so many empty rooms is because in the 1980s, there was a large increase in enrollment all over the state of Utah (with the exception of Utah State University) so more dorms were built. But the trend dropped and there were a lot of empty rooms across the Utah campuses.
That is until this year.
King credits the increase to the recruiting program, stating that, “They have done extremely well this year. They have done some amazing work and got some new people to recruit that are closer to the age of the high school students. That has really helped. They should really give themselves a pat on the back. When there are more people living on campus, there are more students that are registered full time (taking 15 or more credit hours) there is more money coming into the school and it reduces the educational costs for everyone.”
While the numbers in residential life are up, enrollment is much the same as it has been in past years. The final numbers are not released to the state until the third week of classes and they are generally 500 more than on the first day of classes. But last year on the Price campus on the first day of classes there were 1,498 students enrolled, this year there are 1,532 (not including high school students or ED-Net classes.) That is only an increase of 1.6 percent. However on CEU’s San Juan campus, there was a drop of 4.2 percent this year. So while there may be more students on campus, there are only about 30 more people enrolled than there were last year, but those that are here are taking more classes.
It appeared at the beginning of the summer that enrollment would be up by about 12 percent, but Mike King, vice president of academic affairs, attributes this to the fact that students can enroll on-line. “We’ve had it around for a few years,” said King, “But people are catching on to this system and enrolling earlier. It looked like there were more students because compared to the numbers at that point in the summer the previous year, we didn’t have nearly that many applications submitted.”
So what does it mean for CEU that there are so many people living on campus? According to Brad King, it means that the school will have more weekend activities and more entertainment on campus. Therefore, students will have something to do on weekdays and weekends. It means more money coming into the school and a boost in morale for those students living in the dorms.