On Wednesday, a press release was delivered to our email inbox signifying Eastern needs to try harder.

Enrollment has once again dropped, and the loss is of nearly 400 students from the previous fall semester.

The university has 8,520 students walking its campus.

The bright side, if there ever was one, is the freshmen enrollment had increased by all of 2 percent, but in reality, that’s only 47 students.

Yes, it would seem the university’s enrollment tactics have worked and has the beginnings of a diverse student body, but a 2-percent increase is not that impressive.

We ran a story that same day explaining what recruitment tactics departments have been used to get more students, which is a great thing.

It is nice to see how in the midst of a declining enrollment, departments have still found ways to get and even keep their students.

Whatever they are doing should be modeled and reworked on a grander scale for the university as a whole.

The News feels that the university as a whole should focus on better recruitment strategies on a larger scale to attract students.

Students are not exposed to much advertising for Eastern until they enter the Mattoon-Charleston area, which can be detrimental to recruitment because there are a lot of students the institution could be missing.

Eastern is a rather secluded school, with our closest neighbor being University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

They advertise on a wide scale, which Eastern could learn to do.

Granted, they have more funding, but with the way things have been going, the university should think outside of the box for students.

Maybe Eastern could lower its enrollment requirements slightly and adjust the transfer rates and get a few more students through the doors.

Now, in no way is The News advocating for the school to make it easy for anyone to enroll, but make its admission more obtainable.

The university is known to be a transfer-friendly school, so why not capitalize more on that and gain in momentum?

Whenever people hear the name Eastern, they might think of it as only being a teacher’s college, but the university has many other programs and majors other schools do not have, so that could also be an avenue that should be taken.

Again, while it is a good thing the university is showing some promise with freshmen enrollment, Eastern should be honest with itself about its entire enrollment situation.

Overall, things are not getting better and there is still a steady decline.

It is time for the officials to think outside the box and look for other ways of recruiting students.

The daily editorial is the majority opinion of the editorial board of The Daily Eastern News.