Despite the global pandemic, economic turmoil and social unrest, enrollment at Colorado Mesa University (CMU) is the same as last year.

With so many different factors at play, CMU’s ability to retain its students is a huge accomplishment. 9,162 students are registered for the Fall 2020 semester, which is down fewer than 80 students from the Fall 2019 semester. 

For the fall 2019 semester, out of the 9,239 undergrad students, just over 75% were full time. The number excluded students who were only enrolled through the Extended Campus Program. 

On top of the undergrad students, there were also 892 high school students taking classes through CMU, and another 134 students that were going through a graduate program. 

CMU Public Relations Director, David Ludlam, credits the immediate creation of the Safe Together, Strong Together initiative for the strong performance in enrollment. 

“We demonstrated to students and parents that not only did we have a plan and intention to return to campus, but we also had a moral presupposition built into our plan,” Ludlam said about designing the program early. 

Another reason CMU was able to retain enrollment was through redeployments — shuffling staff around. “During the lockdown, and up until now, those whose positions served a portion of campus life that isn’t possible under the pandemic, were redeployed to places like student services and or admissions,” Ludlam said. 

This redeployment meant that CMU was able to keep its staff employed, without having to run programs that would’ve damaged the chance of holding in person classes. 

In the past couple of years, college enrollment has been decreasing due to a myriad of factors, including rising tuition costs. The start of a pandemic hasn’t helped these statistics. Colleges such as University of Colorado Boulder (CU) have faced this problem. 

According to the University of Colorado Student Headcount enrollment data, in 2017 undergraduate enrollment at CU numbered 27,966. According to a 9News article published Sept. 11, freshman enrollment is expected to drop by 12%, and overall enrollment by 2%. 

Colorado State University (CSU) has a similar drop to CU, with enrollment down 5.3% from last year, according to the Fort Collins newspaper The Coloradoan. 

Unlike other Colorado universities, CMU was able to retain many of its students from the last year due to its early creation of COVID-19 procedures and its redeployment of staff.