The Department of Higher Education has released the final enrollment figures for Fall 2015.

Enrollment is measured in two ways: head count which counts students that take at least one credit and Full Time Equivalents (FTEs) which counts the actual number of credits produced by the institution, one FTE is equal to 15 undergraduate credits or 12 graduate credits. Head count is the usual number given in newspapers but really doesn't mean much. FTEs affect the tuition income and state appropriation to the university.

Western's head count has dropped 2.7% but its FTEs dropped 10.4%, from 2,222 to 1,990. That's a drop of 232 FTEs. To give you an idea, this is the equivalent of 58 classes of 20 students each or the work load of 14 full time faculty. The last time FTEs fell below 2,000 was in 2009.

What should really concern the University administration is the drop in undergraduate FTEs was 20.1%. Graduate FTEs increased 40.3 % from 357 to 501, mainly due to on line classes.

To give you an idea on how the rest of the state fared in FTE's: NMIMT up 0.4%, NMSU down 3%, UNM down 1.1%, ENMU down 6.4% and NMHU up 0.4%.

All these figures are available on the Dept. of Higher Ed web site.

Alfred Milligan
Silver City NM