Editor’s Note: This story has been corrected to change all instances of the incorrect word FASFA to FAFSA. 

EIU’s on campus enrollment is down 7.35% for fall 2024, marking the biggest percent drop since 2018.  

Despite this drop, Eastern Illinois University’s administration is feeling largely positive because enrollment actually ended better than anticipated, according to Vice President for Enrollment Management Josh Norman.

“I feel really good about where we landed because of all of the market factors that we had to endure,” Norman said. 

Overall, Eastern’s enrollment fell 3.40% this year. However, in the past eight years, enrollment has trended upward.  

This is the lowest overall enrollment has been since 2021. 

EIU’s fall semester on-campus and overall enrollment from the past eight years.  

Enrollment fell this year, Norman said, because of three primary factors: delayed Free Application for Federal Student Aid, visa denial for prospective international students and an abnormally large graduating class in 2023. 

Last year, FAFSA released three months late on Dec. 30 rather than the typical Oct. 1, due largely to issues related to a Congress mandated simplification process.  

“When you go from a cycle where you open up the FAFSA in February and you package aid in December, and the FAFSA doesn’t open until December and you don’t package aid until May, that pushes everything back,” Norman said. 

While Eastern pushed back grant and scholarship deadlines to make up for the lost time, Norman said it wasn’t enough to maintain enrollment.  

In total, the number of students nationally who completed FAFSA dropped 11.6% from 2023, according to data from the National College Attainment Network. 

According to Director of Marketing and Communications Christy Kilgore, FAFSA being delayed as long as it was came as a surprise last year. 

Both Norman and Kilgore said the university began preparing for lower enrollment as soon as word on extended delays started. 

This year, she said, EIU is anticipating FAFSA opening late and are starting to prepare for it early in financial aid. 

Alongside the FAFSA issues, Norman said international student enrollment was well below what was expected. 

He said there were some major issues including visa denial and a lack of visa appointments being made and followed through with. 

Many prospective international students were denied this year, he said, with international students down around 200 less than anticipated. 

Norman also pointed to last year’s graduating class as part of the reason EIU’s numbers dropped.  

Over 1,270 students graduated last year, larger than any incoming fall freshman class since 2017, according to past tenth day reports.  

This year, the reported freshman class including on- and off-campus students was 1,040. There were 1,093 freshmen in total in 2023 and 1,201 in 2022.  

“Despite this sub optimal outcome from the lower-than-expected international student enrollments and overall enrollment, because we planned for it, we’re in pretty good shape,” said Norman. “We’re just going to have to be continually mindful of the future.” 

He said EIU is going into the next fiscal year with a balanced budget.  

Eastern has put out a number of plans to wrangle in enrollment at both the marketing and administrative level for the spring semester and fall of next year. 

According to Norman, there are over 100 strategic action plans in place with 55 people in administration working on them, in connection to President Jay Gatrell’s Plan 2028, ranging from direct admission projects to a new marketing kit.  

One of the biggest, he said, was a new direct admissions program. Under the new program, EIU’s partnered high schools will send lists of directory information for students with a minimum of 3.0 grade point average. Then, EIU will reach out to the students and offer direct admission to the university. 

Currently, Norman said over 2,000 students have been identified for direct admission within the region.  

Happening next year, the freshman connection program will be mandatory in some form for all incoming freshman, he said.  

According to Norman, freshmen will have the option of being in both university foundation class and freshman connections, just freshman connections with mandatory lunches with mentors or can opt to just have a mentor.  

“This isn’t just about enrolling new incoming students,” he said. “This is about better serving our current students as well.” 

There have been many changes over in marketing as well, Kilgore said. 

This year, EIU is focused on bigger scale out-of-state marketing.  

After last year’s in-state tuition change, removing out-of-state tuition from EIU, a larger avenue has been opened to the marketing department.

Kilgore said that marketing is looking to focus in on those areas, especially for the St. Louis, Missouri, and Terra Haute, Indiana, areas.  

The out-of-state tuition removal, she said, was a change made specifically with enrollment in mind.  

Additionally, EIU is starting early on updated financial aid calculators with more features. Kilgore said. Last year, Kilgore said they were scrambling to update the calculator at the last minute.  

Direct mail will also be making a comeback in marketing this year, Kilgore said.  

Where historically mass letters through mail have been ignored, quite literally coining the term junk mail, according to Kilgore, this isn’t the case anymore. 

“It feels fun to get something in the mail as opposed to digitally now,” she said. 

She said she believes letters will garner more attention and bring in students more than an email can.  

Overall, Kilgore said that marketing has become a lot more “intentional” as the years have gone by.  

“Way back, I mean like old days old days, you made a viewbook and then people [would] come to our school,” she said. 

Marketing’s biggest long-term shift, Kilgore said, has been trying to reframing how students look at college debt. 

“I think a lot of students growing hearing those kinds of narratives and assume if you go to college, you’re going to be eleventy billion dollars in debt forever,” she said. 

EIU’s prime demographic is middle to lower income students, being ranked seventh in the region for best value recently.  

Marketing is seeking to show high school seniors that college doesn’t have to come with steep debt, she said. 

Looking forward, according to Norman, freshman applications for fall 2025 are up 17% compared to last year at this time.  

He said spring 2025 is already looking up on admissions and expects spring enrollment to fill in some of the gaps from fall. 

Kilgore is also confident for the future.  

“I will never think a place like Eastern doesn’t have a place in the world,” she said.  

Alli Hausman can be reached at 581-2812 or at athausman@eiu.edu.