Enrollment Degredation

There is a Problem with Enrollment

Baylor University’s biggest current financial challenge is the university’s failure to meet

its enrollment targets during the past two years. The decline in enrollment that has begun

in earnest during the spring 2004 semester is accompanied by the looming possibility of a

further decline in enrollment in the fall 2004 semester.

One of the unfortunate aspects of the obvious enrollment problem was the initial

unwillingness of Baylor’s administration to acknowledge that there is a problem. Now

that the serious decline in enrollment in the spring semester of 2004 is clear, the reality of

the decline has finally been acknowledgedвЂ"at least by the Provost.

There has been repeated denial that the declining enrollment has anything to do with the

way “Baylor 2012” is being implemented or with administrative policy decisions. The

most commonly given explanation for the decline is a reference to national economic

problems. This explanation is not substantive.

Failure to acknowledge that there is an enrollment problem coupled with attempts to

“explain away” the problem is the first step toward insuring that the problem will grow.

People do not like bad news, but, even more, people do not like to be told that there is no

bad news only to find out later that there is and that they have been misinformed.