News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Tennessee Tech enrollment will likely decrease slightly heading into the spring semester.
Vice President for Enrollment and Communications Karen Lykins said the decline happens to most universities every year. Lykins said a big reason for the decrease is the large group of students that recently graduated.
“We just graduated over 1,000 students on Friday,” Lykins said. “Of course, you have to subtract those out of the total so what we look like is who is returning that is eligible to return and it’s pretty consistent at about 90 percent of those students return for the spring.”
Lykins said the university is continuing to recruit students to the university and is providing the same opportunities students would have if they had started at Tech in the fall. Lykins said on a good note, the fall scholarship deadline period has ended and that enrollment numbers for next fall are on pace to break enrollment records for the second year in a row.
“We are tracking ahead in applications and in students that we have admitted over last fall,” Lykins said. “So it’s looking very encouraging as we continue to recruit students.”
Lykins said despite losing a large portion of students due to graduation the university is making up some of the decline with transfer students.
“We have a healthy number of transfer admins coming out coming out of community colleges or sometimes not happy with being away from home and want to come back to Cookeville,” Lykins said. “So springtime is when we see some of those new students actually take action and come be with us.”
Lykins said new students also enroll for the spring semester for various life reasons. Lykins said the university is continuing to work with applicants in any way they can to provide opportunities for them to further their education.
