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Purdue's summer enrollment up 10% from a year ago

The summer semester ends August 2 at Purdue, but some administrators already are thinking about what to offer next year.

Provost Tim Sands says preliminary numbers show an enrollment increase of at least 10% from a year ago. He calls that positive, but administrators were hoping for more.

“Around the country, a lot of campuses reported decreases because the economy was improving and students were going out working. Somehow we managed to increase despite the overall trend,” he says, “but there’s a lot more to be done there.”

Sands says online classes saw a 50% increase in enrollment from last year. He says that information and other lessons learned will be used when figuring out what to offer next summer.

“One of the challenges we had is that there were courses that had great demand that we didn’t end up satisfying. We need to go back and make sure, given the data we have now, that next year when  we offer those courses, we offer a sufficient number of sections.”

Sands says bolstering this summer’s class schedule was done over a few months, which didn’t leave some academic units enough time to prepare. He thinks having a full year to plan will produce better results next year.

The university is considering a trimester plan and getting more students to take a summer course is the first step to establishing such a calendar.

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