Volume: 59 Issue: 19
MARCH 16, 2016
driftwood.uno.edu
GAME CHANGING STRATEGY
UNO spin for wins in enrollment and retention BY CHLOE GAGNON News Editor Enrollment has decreased dramatically at the University of New Orleans in recent years. UNO’s enrollment was at 17,742 students pre-Katrina. In the Fall of 2015, UNO’s Office of Institutional Research reported only 8,423 enrolled students . With over half the enrollment down in a ten-year span and budget cuts happening left and right, increasing enrollment would be a fighting force to keep this Univer-
sity strong. The term ‘enrollment’ is used to encompass both recruitment and retention. “They are both very important parts of our enrollment strategy. They need to be separated, and each one needs to have a plan,” said UNO Provost John Nicklow. The Strategic Enrollment Manangement Committee (SEMC) met in July for a retention retreat, broke into groups with student data and discovered the problem areas. “We looked at programs, we looked at retention by race, by gender, by geograph-
ic location, by how many hours you’re taking. What becomes very clear is there are opportunities...to improve the retention of certain populations.” “By focusing on a specific problem, it becomes a tractable or solvable problem that if we can fix that or make progress on it, it dramatically reflects overall retention.” After the groups identified some problems areas, they came up with action plans to help a specific population of students. Nicklow gave an example of one of the action plans set forth
called ‘15 to Finish.’ “The data is very clear; if you take 15 or more hours, you succeed at a much higher rate and it’s just [by] looking at students that take 15 or more, [those that] take less than 15 to 12 and [those] that take less than 12. If you take less than 12 hours, the data says that you’re retained at a much lower rate.” Retained as in that student will not return the next semester. According to Nicklow, only 2530 percent of the student population takes 15 or more hours. Continued on page 4