Eastern’s enrollment numbers continue to decline, with about 10 percent less students in attendance this spring than there were in the fall semester.

The number of undergraduate students decreased from 8,975 to 8,114 students, according to the census taken from the Banner student information system.

Blair Lord, provost and the vice president for academic affairs, said the decrease could have been caused by a number of factors.

“It was probably driven by the fact that we have some large classes that were leaving, so you have big numbers leave at the end of the fall semester,” he said. “Perhaps it was driven a little bit by the continuing challenge of students to finance their education.”

Lord said the decrease in enrollment was expected because the trend has remained consistent over the past few years.

 “The truth of the matter is we saw for the spring semester a smaller number than we had a year ago in the spring semester, which was a dead ringer certainty because we had a fewer number this past fall than we had prior in the fall,” he said. 

For the past three years, the number of undergraduate students has decreased about the same percentage from fall to spring.

Lord said the number usually fluctuates then because of students graduating, students enrolling in the spring, and students leaving for academic reasons.

“All of those things can vary a little bit from year to year, but the plusses and minuses more or less cancel out, and we end up with about 90 percent of the number that we had in the fall when we count them in the spring.”

Patrick Early, the assistant vice president for integrative marketing and communications, said this trend is not unique to Eastern.

“It is normal to see some shrinkage from fall to spring, he said. “That is a phenomenon you’ll see across colleges and universities throughout the country.” 

He said Eastern has reached 92 percent of its goal for Fall 2013 applications, and he has a bright outlook for enrollment next semester.

 “The number of new freshmen applicants is up significantly over last year, and we are working hard to convert those applicants admitted into students at EIU,” he said.

Lord said numbers could be up soon because of the administration’s recent strategic enrollment initiative.

“Our freshmen application flow is running almost 20 percent ahead of where we were last year,” he said. “So far the efforts we are making to increase the class has been showing some effectiveness. We will have to continue to work on transfer numbers, which is not as robust.”

He said part of the efforts to increase enrollment include providing more opportunities for financial aid, although state and federal aid have been less available.

“People are having trouble affording education,” he said. “We have put more financial aid money institutionally into it, but that’s a relatively new phenomenon so the effect of that hasn’t fully laid itself out yet.”