UAFS working on strategies to counter drop in enrollment
FORT SMITH — Faced with a decline in enrollment, the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith is working on a plan to improve recruitment and retention of students.
A committee has been formed to work on the plan, officials said at a board of visitors meeting Wednesday.
UAFS submitted preliminary enrollment numbers to the Arkansas Department of Higher Education, Chancellor Terisa Riley said. The university is down from where it was this time in 2018 by about 300 students, which brings the total number to about 6,258 students. This is made up of the university’s concurrent enrollment students, current undergraduate population and its master’s program.
Riley said regional, comprehensive institutions across the country have been struggling with attracting traditional-aged college student undergraduate enrollment, with those numbers going down.
“We’re no different, and we’re equally susceptible, I think, as an organization to some of those trends, particularly in just in the … sheer number of high school graduates who go directly into college,” Riley said. “We know that there’s an untapped market there as well of people who do not go to college from high school, who may not believe that that’s achievable or affordable for them.”
UAFS has been working directly with Fort Smith School District on workforce development opportunities, Riley said.
The university is seeing how it can get students into a kind of pipeline in which they might receive certificates or associate’s degrees while still in high school that would allow them to earn more money and help them be able to afford a full, four-year degree program if they are inclined to pursue that route.
However, as UAFS looks at enrollment trends, it also understands that it has to do more outreach, officials said.
Lee Krehbiel, vice chancellor of student affairs and enrollment management at UAFS, gave a presentation regarding a Strategic Enrollment Management Committee. Krehbiel said the university has been in the process of creating this committee over the past six weeks. It formally met for the first time last week.
During this school year, Krehbiel said, the university is engaging in the building of a five-year plan to help align its visions and resources in terms of what it may look like in the future.
The definition he gave for enrollment management stated it is a comprehensive and coordinated process. A college identifies enrollment goals that are allied with its mission, strategic plan, and environment and resources. The school tries to reach those goals by coordinating efforts from the administration, student services, curriculum planning and market analysis.
An example of what the committee is doing, Krehbiel said, concerns the UAFS admissions application.
The committee is actively looking at products and resources to help create a new application that is mobile-device friendly, easy to navigate for users, especially those who are not local, and provides useful information such as what programs are eligible for federal financial aid.