Second-year increase in college enrollment, more non-IN student
Overall enrollment in Indiana’s public higher education institutions increases for a second consecutive year – marking again the highest year-over-year increase since 2010 when college enrollment numbers entered the downward trajectory that lasted more than a decade.
This again can be seen as a positive to the higher education folks who are trying to reverse Indiana’s declining college enrollment. Still, Commissioner for Higher Education Chris Lowery tells your favorite education newsletter he is “pleased, but not satisfied” with the progress. He’d like to see the needle move a little faster, along with other factors such as completion rate and building pipelines.
“Pleased but not satisfied is my bottom line. You know, reversing a decade plus worth of decline, we’re starting to build some momentum,” Lowery expresses.
Data from the Indiana Commission for Higher Education shows enrollment at statewide public institutions increased by more than 5,000 students – a 2.2% increase – from fall 2023 including increases in both resident and non-resident enrollment.
At the undergraduate level, enrollment improved by more than 2.0% from fall 2023 while graduate enrollment also increased by nearly one percent. Additionally, both four-year and two-year institutions experienced an increase in enrollment of at least two percent compared to the prior year. Four-year institution enrollment rates surpassed 190,000 students for the first time since 2020.
However, enrollment numbers have yet to bounce back to pre-pandemic levels, with data showing the numbers are still down by almost 3.0% from fall 2019. Breaking that down further, over the past five years, Indiana resident college enrollment has declined by 9.8%, while non-resident enrollment has increased by 16.4 percent. We’ll circle back to that in a bit.
We had told you earlier this fall that Indiana University and Purdue University celebrated record enrollments. The state’s flagship universities posted the highest increases in enrollment compared to the other five public institutions. IU Bloomington set a record with 48,000 students enrolled and Purdue enrolled 57,596 students, a 31% increase from 2019.
Indiana State University, the University of Southern Indiana, and Vincennes University again record year-over-year enrollment declines between 2023 and 2024, with ISU suffering the largest drop-off, a 5.3% decrease in enrollment headcount since last year.
Increase in Non-Resident Students
As we noted, a standout in the data is the overall increase in out-of-state student enrollment at public institutions over the last five years . . . while in-state enrollment has declined since 2019.
Compared to 2023 fall enrollment, Indiana resident enrollment this fall did grow by 1.3% total, while non-resident enrollment increased by more at 4.1 percent. Out of state enrollment statewide has been on a steady incline every year (except the Covid-impacted year of 2020), since 2019, rising from 69,000 students in fall 2019 to almost 90,000 this fall.
Where are the out of state students going? Purdue and IU are seeing the highest increases in non-resident students, especially within the last five years.
This year again, more non-resident students are enrolled at Purdue’s West Lafayette campus than resident students – likely from the university attracting students from around the world to its engineering programs. That’s been the case since 2021, when Purdue reported 17,951 undergraduate resident students and 19,007 undergraduate non-resident students.
The gap seems to be growing. The number of out of state undergraduate students at Purdue has soared by 47% since 2019, with the university this fall reporting 20,150 undergraduate Indiana students, and 23,847 undergraduate non-resident students. The gap is also larger for graduate students, with 11,046 non-residents enrolled this year compared to 2,553 Hoosier residents.
At IU, the trend of increasing non-resident students is similar, but not quite as drastic as Purdue. IU has enjoyed a 25.5% increase in non-resident undergraduate students and a smaller 3.6% increase in graduate students. IU reports 16,773 out of state undergraduate students enrolled this fall, with 21,033 resident undergraduate students attending.
Ivy Tech Community College also has recorded an 11% increase in non-resident students within the last five years, and a 5.9% decline in resident students since 2019. Though, Ivy Tech reports a 3.0% increase in resident enrollment from 2023, and 0.6% increase in non-resident enrollment.
For comparison, the rest of the state’s public universities have seen declines in out of state students in the last five years.
Ball State University reported a 34.9% shortfall in non-resident undergraduate students since 2019; 44.9% for ISU; 23% for USI; and 19.1% for Vincennes.
Is this a concern for the state, as it wants to increase the college-going rate for Indiana residents? In Commissioner Lowery’s eyes, it’s not a red flag for him. At the end of the day, recruiting non-residents to the state’s flagship university brings talent to Indiana, he notes.
“States are in a competition for talent,” Lowery asserts. “If that’s a way we get students here … we don’t have ocean beaches and we don’t have mountains, but what we’ve got are, you know, are just many, many great public and private institutions. If we can get talent here and then keep them, Indiana wins.”
Still, out of state college students continue to be far less likely to stay in Indiana.
Also bear in mind that Purdue recently announced plans to alter its acceptance rates due to insufficient accommodations for all of its students in West Lafayette. How much that will affect resident or non-resident students – or for how long – remains to be seen.
With that, however, we’ve told you Purdue plans to leverage its Indianapolis campus as a way to solve capacity issues in West Lafayette, potentially attracting more of those out of state and international students more interested in attending school in an urban environment.
We’ll also be interested to see if any talk on the ratio of residents to non-resident students comes up during the next budget discussions in 2025.
We’ve already heard money will be tight for the next budget all around, leaving us wondering how much room there will be for increases in state university funding. Obviously, universities bring in more money in tuition from non-resident students who don’t pay the lower in-state tuition rates. The ratios could continue to shift if universities find themselves needing more cash that the state can’t provide.
Watchful Eye on Enrollment Declines
As we mentioned, ISU, USI, and Vincennes report enrollment declines from fall 2023. USI though, is sitting mostly flat in its year-over-year numbers from 2023 to 2024, down only 0.3% from fall 2023.
Vincennes reports a year-over-year decline of 2.1%, but a 34% decrease since 2019 – the highest of all the state’s public universities.
ISU enrollment has declined by 33% from 2019 when 11,476 students were enrolled compared to 7,721 this fall.
All state institutions besides IU and Purdue have yet to recoup losses in enrollment since 2019. Enrollment at IU and Purdue’s regional campuses has also sharply declined since 2019.
As for the universities with continuing enrollment declines . . . ICHE keeps an eye on them and will offer assistance when needed, Commissioner Lowery tells us. None of them have reached an inflection point extreme enough to cause concern and further intervention from the state, he reveals.
“Obviously, we stay very close to the institutions, our team does, I do,” Lowery explains. “Gosh, most of these institutions, I’ve met with folks you know, in enrollment, student success, all of those areas that you know lead and add up to more students coming and/or being retained.”
He also particularly expresses confidence in ISU’s direction. The university, as we’ve told you, has for a bit faced questions about its sustainability and declining enrollment.
“Indiana State, you know, the reality is, their governing board, the board of trustees, the new president and the team that he’s building there, they’re keenly focused on (enrollment),” Lowery observes. “To say there’s an awareness there, it would be a complete understatement. They are – they’re keenly focused on it.”
Lowery also points to a lot of the commission’s initiatives to boost enrollment through increasing access and affordability to help these institutions – initiatives which we’ve discussed extensively throughout our pages like Indiana Pre-Admissions, the 21st Century Scholars auto-enrollment, and expansions of the Frank O’Bannon Grant.
Focuses on access and affordability could help an institution like ISU, which seems to be moving to more prominently brand itself as the four-year state college for first-generation students – who are more likely to face such barriers. Vincennes also targets those students as well.
Looking Forward
Last year we delved into how the 2023 increases in enrollment could be the first signs of results from ICHE initiatives to boost college-going in the state.
Today, Commissioner Lowery still sees the state is on track with programs like the Pre-Admissions and expansions to 21st Century Scholars (which we won’t see true results from until at least 2027).
“There’s not a one of those initiatives that I look at and go, ‘Yeah, you know, we’re not seeing any kind of indicators that would say we should continue to do this,’ because I think they’ve been really data- and fact-driven,” Lowery reflects.
Also, of note is that the commission just completed research into why high school graduates in Indiana are skipping college, with early findings suggesting that students perceive college as unaffordable . . . but they still overall value postsecondary education. That latter revelation Lowery sees as a big positive, he tells us. “The spark is there,” he suggests.
ICHE plans to have a full report on this research in the coming weeks, and we’ll have a breakdown and takeaways for you when it’s released soon. Stay tuned.