Elder Speaking at Town Hall Javell Sheppard
On Thursday, Oct. 24, Saint Xavier University (SXU) President Keith Elder, Ph.D., MPH, MPA hosted a Town Hall meeting about the current state of the university. The meeting focused heavily on enrollment numbers and retention rates.
Brian Holtzfield, Vice President of Student Enrollment, Alexander King, Assistant Provost, Robert Wallet, CFO Jenny DeVivo, Mission & Heritage Vice President, also spoke at the meeting.
Compared to the nationwide declines in first-year enrollments, SXU’s numbers have grown over the past four years. With 735 incoming first-year students, the university has seen its third year out of the past four with 720+ enrolled first-year students. This year’s total undergraduate students are the largest since 2006 at 1,051.
Additionally, SXU welcomed 316 transfer students, its largest since 2017. The increase of students is accompanied by a back-to-back record of new student athletes (196), resulting in the highest net tuition revenue from student athletes in the university’s history.
SXU also saw its retention rates of first-year students improve for its second consecutive year. While SXU saw an increase in enrollment, there were also some challenges.
Nationally, first-year enrollment dropped by 6% with declines of 6.5% for private non-profits and over 10% at institutions serving high percentages of Pell-eligible students. Due to a decreased pool of highschool graduates in the state of Illinois, undergraduate enrollment at four-year institutions decreased by 10% since 2014.
“If we are going to grow, a significant part of our growth is by word of mouth. We have to make certain we are serving the students that we have quite well. That means that we are meeting their needs,” voiced Elder.
Graduate enrollment faced declines in credit hours and revenue.
Despite the issues, SXU experienced an increase in new graduate student headcount following the reopening of the MBA program and a high enrollment in Speech-Language Pathology.
SXU is currently working to reduce dependency on traditional undergraduate enrollment, adult undergraduate, graduate, certificates, and improve retention. “Graduate centralization efforts are underway with foundational actions focused on building the infrastructure and operations and implementing best practices needed to recruit and enroll graduate students,” shared Holtsfield.
“Institutionally, we need to identify opportunities to generate incremental revenue by expanding options in existing programs, developing new programs and creating educational partnerships for wholesale recruitment,” continued Holtsfield.
For any questions or concerns, another Town Hall meeting will be held on Monday Nov. 11 at 11 a.m. in the Wiseman Student Lounge. All students are encouraged to attend.