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

Sometimes people don’t take criticism well. They get angry and become stubborn. Other times, though, people take the criticism like adults and learn from the errors that are presented to them. They strive to correct the mistakes.

Eastern’s spring enrollment figures are better, and that is a welcome sign in these troubled times of budget shortfalls and enrollment disparities. In addition, the administration has made some solid and noticeable efforts to correct the alienation of transfer students, most notably the hiring of Larry Larvick.

Larvick was previously the vice president of student services at Lake Land College in Mattoon before taking a part-time position earlier this month to help Eastern with its transfer student enrollment decline.

Eastern’s transfer student enrollment for the fall semester was 858, a decrease from the previous year’s transfer student enrollment of 1,007.

At the same time, Eastern also experienced a significant decline in the overall student enrollment while other state universities saw steady increases in transfer students and overall enrollment figures.

Larvick, with his 30 years of higher education experience, will regularly visit the state’s community colleges in an effort to recruit transfer students. It’s about time Eastern took a positive step to improve its enrollment and keep the students at the university once they get here. It’s important to keep transfer students since they make up about 10 percent of Eastern’s total enrollment.

Since fall semester began, the Council on Academic Affairs has made significant changes to the general education requirements and course credit transferability.

Both of these initiatives should be commended because they will help ensure Eastern as a competitor for a growing number of students.

Frank Hohengarten, dean of enrollment management, said being aware that the university needed to a better job helped spring enrollment.

The spring 2001 on- and off-campus enrollment is 9,805, which was a drop from the fall enrollment. However, Eastern retained 1 percent more students than it did last spring, which is a positive first step.

The administration has recognized that it has a problem. Instead of looking in another direction and denying the problem, they are taking steps to fix it. Hiring Larvick and working with a problem will make Eastern more competitive and help enrollment numbers.