CA M PUS N E WS
D ECE M B ER 2020
800
700
600
500
All Enrolled Students Full Time Equivalent Full Time Students
400
'05
'06
'07
'08
'09
'10
'11
'12
'13
'14
'15
'16
'17
'18
'19
'20
Another record falls BY LANCE SCHWARTZ • CHIEF COMMUNICATION OFFICER
In March 2020, Bethany Lutheran College was forced to move all classes to online learning, send students back home, and close the campus due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This sudden shift certainly could have been the impetus to sow the seeds of doubt about whether Bethany’s students would be interested in attending college – in person – in the fall of 2020. While the hope was to reopen in August as usual, it was never a guarantee. Something very interesting happened during those five months of quiet on the campus. President Gene Pfeifer explained, “Certainly our hope, even in May, was to bring the Vikings back to campus in August. After all, that’s why Bethany exists—to mentor these students and help them to grow in the knowledge of their Savior. So, we made the announcement early on that we would open in August. But ultimately, it was up to the students to decide what was right for them. We were thrilled when most decided to 20
return to campus.” In the midst of the worldwide pandemic, the fall 2020 enrollment at Bethany set a new record. And while it wasn’t the first-year class that led the enrollment growth—there are twenty-two fewer new students on campus than the previous fall—the upper-class students came back to campus in record numbers. A metric of student satisfaction in higher education are the yearly retention numbers. Retention is expressed as the percentage of students who attended the previous year and choose to come back to continue their education. For many years, Bethany retention numbers hovered in the 70-75% range. Retention for the fall 2020 semester is at historic
