NMSU: Freshman class belies falling enrollment
First-year numbers up 11.3% since 2016
Two days after New Mexico State University’s regents discussed enrollment declines when voting to start a search to replace Chancellor Garrey Carruthers, the school issued a news release touting its “largest increase in first-time freshmen in more than 17 years.”
The Las Cruces university has 2,051 freshmen this fall, according to preliminary counts released Friday. That’s up 11.3 percent since 2016 and marks the first year-over-year freshman gain since 2009.
Overall enrollment, however, continues to trend downward. The university’s total head count sits at 14,453, the new numbers show. That’s down 2.7 percent from last year.
The Board of Regents on Wednesday decided to launch a search to replace Carruthers when his contract expires next July, effectively denying his offer to stay an additional two years.
The vote followed weeks of drama surrounding the former New Mexico governor’s future at the university. He announced last month that he would retire at his contract’s end, but later said the decision came after regents told him they were not planning to renew his contract.
Carruthers said he would be willing serve another two years if they changed their minds, and lawmakers, students, businesspeople and others urged the regents to keep him.
Some questioned whether politics were involved. The governor appoints the regents, and Carruthers has been critical of Gov. Susana Martinez, a fellow Republican.
Martinez’s office has denied any involvement with regents regarding the chancellor position.
As the regents voted 4-0 to proceed with a search for a new chancellor Wednesday, Chairwoman Debra Hicks mentioned enrollment.
“The board has expressed ongoing concern about significant enrollment lost,” Hicks said during the meeting, noting enrollment is down 27 percent.
The school’s total enrollment has fallen 13.8 percent from Carruthers’ first year and the preliminary 2017 figures provided by NMSU. There has been a 27 percent dip in NMSU’s graduate student head count since 2010 — but only 14.4 percent during Carruthers’ tenure.
Hicks in a Saturday email called the 27-percent figure a “misquote,” but added that the decline since NMSU’s 201011 recession peak exceeds 20 percent.
NMSU is not alone in shrinking head counts. College enrollment has trended downward across the state.
Between 2013 and 2016 — the latest year for which data is available on the New Mexico Higher Education Department website — statewide postsecondary enrollment fell 9 percent.
The University of New Mexico, the state’s largest university, saw a total student decline of 5.5 percent between 2013 and 2016. UNM has not issued 2017 figures yet.
But Hicks said in her email that nearby University of Texas El Paso has gained students in recent years.
NMSU’s “increase in freshmen enrollment is encouraging, and the result of a great deal of recent focused, prioritized effort,” she wrote. “Unfortunately, overall enrollment has decreased much more (than) the other two (New Mexico) research universities and UTEP, which has had consecutive years of enrollment growth.”
NMSU spokesman Justin Bannister said Friday that Carruthers was not doing interviews. But Friday’s news release did include the following statement:
“I certainly feel we are turning the corner when it comes to enrollment,” Carruthers said. “From what we know so far, our increase in first-time freshmen is incredibly strong, if not the highest in the state. The strategies we’ve deployed in marketing and recruitment are definitely paying off, even while we have increased our admissions standards and established a first-year, on-campus residency requirement.”
Hicks, however, said it is too soon to know whether NMSU was turning the corner, since the board uses other data to determine success, like student retention and research expenditures. Both of those have dipped in the last four years, she said.