As of last Thursday, enrollment for the Spring 2007 semester decreased by 1.75 percent — about 1,900 students.

Last week, official 15th Day statistics were released, which calculate enrollment for each semester. The statistics include part-time students, but those who drop from classes or choose not to attend are not included.

“If the student is enrolled and getting credits, we include them,” said Wayne Schneider, Institutional Research Information officer. “We don’t include non-credit enrollment in the statistic.”

Now that the numbers have been released, the next step is analyzing them and looking at “virtually every aspect of them,” said Mike Sperko, director of Institutional Data and Information.

Sperko said everything from retention, recruiting and admission efforts will be studied.

To determine the 15th Day statistics, Sperko said two factors are examined — a preponderant and a concurrent.

“Preponderant is a pure system enrollment where every person is counted one time,” he said. He said concurrent calculates a headcount based upon how many students attend each campus for any class.

Schneider said this semester’s results are typical.

“Spring is generally lower than the fall,” he said. “That’s just the normal enrollment trends. There’s always a dip from fall to spring.”

David Creamer, senior vice president of administration, said the statistics help show if retention efforts are working.

“The 15th day is an important date,” he said. “The data allows others to have more insight in to things — it allows a department to look at retention and look at retention initiatives from the fall.”

Contact general assignment reporter Caroline Lautenbacher at [email protected].