Eastern has seen a decrease in earned degrees that is directly related to decreasing enrollment.

Blair Lord, the vice president for Academic Affairs, said Eastern will see the effects of declining enrollment reflected in the earned degrees reports for the next few years.

In Fiscal Year 2012, Eastern awarded a total of 2,782 degrees that included bachelor’s degrees, post-bachelor’s degrees, master’s degrees and specialist degrees.

The numbers were less than in FY 2011, when 2,907 degrees were earned by Eastern students.

“We’re starting to see how our entering classes have been somewhat smaller for a period of time,” he said. “In one way I take that as evidence that we’ve graduated some of the bigger classes that we had a number of years ago.”

Although the numbers decreased, Lord said the figures did not come as a surprise to him because of the decline Eastern has seen in enrollment.

According to the Earned Degrees Report, the majors with the largest number of bachelor’s degree recipients included general studies, elementary education, kinesiology and sports studies, communication studies, and family and consumer sciences.

Lord said the general studies program is housed in the School of Continuing Education and serves as a degree completion program.

“The program is dedicated almost completely to nontraditional students,” he said. “Students in that program are almost entirely people who have been away from higher education or never started higher education when they left high school.”

General studies was the highest on the list of bachelor’s degree recipients with 236 degrees earned in FY 2012.

Lord said many of these students take classes on weekends and online.

“This segment of our market and for higher education in general is the one that is growing the most right now,” he said. “I expect we’ll continue to see some growth in this area because it’s an area where there’s opportunities for growth.”

Lord said public policy is encouraging more people to get a higher education degree.

“It’s likely to be our biggest growth area,” he said.

Graduation rates must be calculated over several years, but Lord said Eastern has seen a fairly consistent six-year graduation rate of around 60 percent.

“For a regional comprehensive institution, our graduation rate is very high,” Lord said. “We’re 10 to 12 percentage points higher than typical regional comprehensive institutions.”

Graduation rates are not instantly assessable, but Lord said Eastern will be able to see the residual effects of enrollment decreases in the next few years.

“We’ve started to see some of the decreases, but they’ll be modest changes if they follow the pattern of enrollment change,” he said. “The biggest changes (in degree recipients) happen when the really big classes graduate.”

Robyn Dexter can be reached at 581-2812 or redexter@eiu.edu.