Enrollment at Knox College is much better than last year, and is getting back to levels of years past where the college saw some big success.
That’s according to Knox President Andrew McGadney, who tells Will Stevenson on WGIL’s “Galesburg In Focus” program new students coming to campus in about a month will be, at the very least, much higher than years past.
“It will look like somewhere in the neighborhood of 430-plus first year, first time students coming out to the campus, compared to 249 last year. A huge increase,” said McGadney. “A large portion of that is international students. We’ve got about 180 students out of that 430-plus.”
Overall, McGadney says international students make up about 24 percent of the student population.
After such a low number of new students last year, to what does McGadney attribute the spike up this year? He says looking at and improving things the college has been doing, as charged by the Board of Trustees.
“The things that we touched upon were systems, were staffing, the way that we looked at the packaging of our scholarship aid, our marketing materials, how we sourced students” said McGadney. “Literally, a soup to nuts transition.”
McGadney says it’s made more remarkable that the students are still coming to Knox in the midst of continued problems with the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA.
He says many students signed on the dotted line after being told dollar for dollar what it will cost to attend Knox.
McGadney’s comments came during a pre-recorded interview. You can hear it Saturday at 8:15 a.m. on WGIL, and then after 9 a.m. on WGIL.com.
