2016-09-07

It's a mixed bag of news from several state schools in Illinois this week. Northern Illinois University President Doug Baker says enrollment is down 5.5%, putting the school at 19,015 students university-wide. Baker tells the campus community that the largest decline is in the freshman class. Numbers from NIU show there are 457 fewer freshman compared to last year: that's a drop of 20.2%. Smaller declines took place among transfer and graduate students. On the good news side, students are staying once they enter NIU. The number of last year's freshmen who returned is up 1% and the retention of transfer students is 2% higher than last year. Enrollment in the NIU law school is up 4.3%, which bucks a national trend for law schools. Meanwhile, Illinois State University says its fall enrollment is up, and the school has its largest freshman class in decades. Illinois State said Tuesday that the 21,039 students on campus is a 1.1 percent increase over a year ago. The 3,638 freshmen make this

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