The spring enrollment numbers for Eastern were released early last week and this semester’s numbers are quite lower than what they have been the previous semesters.

Blair Lord, the vice president for academic affairs, said the change in the numbers was expected.

In this academic year alone, Eastern has lost over 644 students.

While the trend of gaining more students in the fall than in the spring semester and losing students from the fall to spring is considered to be normal, there is a bleak future on the horizon.

Currently, Illinois still has no state budget, which would make it harder for any of Illinois institutions to continue their operations as they normally would.

There are some positives to take note of in the numbers said about Eastern’s enrollment.

The number of international students has gone up, which is favorable sign for the university, and the number of seniors at Eastern has also gone up as well.

The biggest surprise of the rising numbers was the number of graduate student enrolled.

In Friday’s edition of The Daily Eastern News, Lord was quoted as saying this was unusual for a school like Eastern, but it was considered to be a good sign for the university.

Even with these positive numbers, the rest of them are not as good. Looking at the total number of students enrolled at Eastern in the fall 2014 semester, there were 8,913, which then decreased to 8,214 in the following spring.

During the fall 2015, the total student enrollment was 8,520 students, and this semester, there are only 7,876 students currently enrolled at Eastern.

These trends of fewer students at Eastern in the spring rather than in the fall will mostly likely end up getting worst with a state budget. Students may not be able to afford going to school in the future.

Earlier in the semester, Chris Dearth, the former directors of admissions, left his position here at Eastern to pursue a job offer elsewhere.

While he was still at Eastern, Dearth did a good job in terms of trying to bring in more students and for the most part, Dearth was successful in his endeavors.

Now without a new director of admissions and no state budget, Eastern now faces bigger challenges when it is faced bringing in and keeping more students in the years to come.