Nationwide, college enrollment has been steadily decreasing each year since the COVID-19 pandemic began. In one Washington Post article, reporter Nick Anderson states that the pandemic has disrupted colleges everywhere, and that the undergraduate count is about 7 percent lower than in the Fall of 2019.
This is likely because people have lost the motivation and resources to pursue post-high school education since the pandemic. Despite this nationwide trend, enrollment at CMU has been steadily increasing
This overall growth is clear when comparing total enrollment from the Fall of 2021 to the Fall semester of 2022. According to CMU’s 2021-2022 FTE Enrollment Submission, the fall semester had 8,907 out-of-state and in-state students combined in attendance.
As seen on CMU’s website, the current enrollment at CMU for the Fall 2022 semester is 10,835 students. Of these ten thousand students, they are enrolled in a variety of programs, though a majority attend CMU for a Baccalaureate degree.
According to CMU’s Primary Major Enrollment report, many students may not even have a major; in the 2021-2022 school year, there were 2,028 students who were undeclared in the Baccalaureate program. Additionally, a few popular areas of study at CMU are business, biological science and exercise science.
One notable trend is that the art programs have seen a steady increase in students majoring in these programs, despite the pandemic’s aftermath. A specific program that has had a huge increase in enrollment since COVID-19 is the animation, film and motion design program. This program saw a nearly 30% increase in enrollment since 2017.
“The professors are really chill and respect the students as almost equal while giving helpful critiques to our projects,” junior in animation, film and motion design Justin Rosales said.
This program’s comparatively impressive growth is significant, because it shows how many more art creators feel comfortable preparing to pursue a career in the world of art at CMU now, even in spite of COVID-19.
“The open-endedness of the assignments can be a great experience for many artists, being given the opportunity to, for the most part, use whatever software and techniques they see fit to create their projects,” Rosales said. “I feel like the program is unique in that it combines several specializations into one umbrella major.”
One can view these enrollment numbers and more on the CMU website under Academic Program Data if interested. CMU’s recent leaps and bounds in enrollment, despite the circumstances, show that the school is becoming a well-known university in Colorado.
There is a proud number of students that come from out-of-state and other countries, and it is fair to say that CMU has shown steady growth in its student population.
Most of all, they are proud to support and represent student artists.
