Now that it has crossed the 5,000 threshold in enrollment that includes students taking classes via the Internet, the University of Illinois Springfield would like to see that many attending classes on campus.
“We need to decide how big we want to be,” said UIS Chancellor Richard Ringeisen. “Our next goal will probably be to have 5,000 students taking classes on campus and 2,000 living on campus.”
UIS enrollment topped 5,000 for the first time this fall with a 4.3 percent increase over last fall’s total.
The number of enrolled students this year is 5,174, up 213 students over the 2009 total of 4,961 students. The fall 2010 number includes 1,626 exclusively online students.
“Those are targets that my successor will have to deal with,” said Ringeisen, who is retiring Oct. 31. He added that UIS currently doesn’t have enough on-campus housing to accommodate 2,000 students.
“When we first added freshmen (in 2001), we geared up for having more students,” he said. “We thought we’d make it to 5,000 last year, but this year we blew by it.
The record enrollment was featured in a September 10, 2010, article in The State Journal-Register.
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