Students are taking more credit hours

ETSU is witnessing an increase in the average number of credit hours each students are taking in a semester.

While it’s hard to determine why this is the case, Vice Provost of Enrollment Ramona Williams suspects there are a number of causes.

“There are a number of reasons that this could be happening,” Williams said, “from DegreeWorks, to the additional academic advisors, and promoting our 15 to Finish program through DegreeWorks. I think it’s a combination of all of those things.”

However, the increase in the number of hours taken by students might not necessarily mean that there are more students on campus.

ETSU President Brian Noland said in his state of the university address Oct. 2 that number of incoming students in the freshmen class dropped by 56 enrollees, a decrease that could be ascribed to the implementation of Tennessee Promise earlier this semester.

“Unfortunately,” Williams said, “we don’t have the information in yet for this semester. We haven’t had a chance to finalize the information that we have, and I don’t want to give out incorrect information.”

The ETSU Factbook shows that the average number of credit hours has been dropping slowly since the academic year of 2011-2102 through 2014-2015. In 2011-12, ETSU recorded 181,935 credit hours total that were being taken by students. In 2014-15, the numbers had dropped to 171,011 credit hours.

More credit hours being taken at the University means that there is more money being funneled into ETSU, and if numbers don’t improve, that could mean less money for several of the university’s upcoming projects.

“Right now, the numbers don’t look all that great,” Williams said, “but that’s just because we don’t have the information for this year compiled yet. After that comes out, we’ll be able to make a comparison and be able to know for sure.”