Despite a 15 percent increase in tuition, ETSU’s 2001 fall enrollment is up 2.5 percent from last year.
Of the 11,576 students, the largest enrollment increase is in readmissions or students returning to the university after being out for a time.
Dr. Linda Doran, vice provost for academic affairs, said the slowing economy might account for the influx of returning students.
“We found traditionally, that when the economy softens a bit and jobs are less plentiful, people return to school,” Doran said.
In addition to returning students, there are over 100 new graduates for a total of 1,765 students in master’s and doctoral programs. This is a 5.8 percent increase from last year.
Doran attributes this increase to intense graduate recruiting, a soft economy and what she calls “cohort programs” which place a group of students together at off-campus sites for the duration of the graduate program.
“We’re offering some graduate programs in Sevierville, Morristown and Greeneville in addition to the regular activity at Kingsport and Bristol,” she said. “So that’s attracted a lot of people who want to stay home and still do their graduate work.”
Another feature of this year’s enrollment is the 4 percent increase in transfer students. As a Tennessee Board of Regents’ institution, ETSU has the required 32-hour core curriculum which facilitates easy transfer between TBR community colleges and universities within the system. In addition, ETSU has individual agreements with regional schools in 150 academic areas.
“We work hand in hand with Northeast State, Walters State and Virginia Highlands to encourage students to transfer here after completing their two-year degree,” Doran said. “We’ve been working on that for some time and it’s proven to be a very good partnership.”
Also, for the first time, the univerisity is offering two online Regents Degree programs in Professional Studies and Interdisciplinary Studies.
“We did very well with enrollments,” Doran said. “We have 16 people who’ve declared a Regent’s degree in professional studies as their major, and we had about 100 enrollments in these (Regent degree) courses. It’s a good start.”
The number of first-time freshmen is down by 42 students despite the overall increase in enrollment.
According to Doran, this is not surprising because the pool of available high school graduates in the East Tennessee area did not significantly increase from last year. However, the 2001 freshmen have a higher grade-point-average and ACT average than entering students in recent years.
“We feel we are attracting very academically talented students,” Doran said.
Overall, Doran said, she is happy with this year’s enrollment figures and believes that a telephone-recruiting project, among other factors, had some influence on the enrollment increase.

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