Minorities and male more numerous; international students on the decline.
Colleen Curlee, reporter
Sarah Yeakel, editor
MOUNT BERRY – Though the number of minority students at Berry has increased by 67 percent since 2008, the number of international students has decreased by 50 percent during that same period.
The number of non-resident aliens, or international students, began to decrease in 2008, according to the Berry Institutional Research Fact Book, a report produced each October by the college. The drop in international students coincided with Berry’s switch to NCAA Division III from the NAIA and, with that switch, the loss of athletic scholarships. Some of those athletic scholarships went to international students coming to Berry to compete.
Simultaneous with the drop in international students, however, have been rises in the numbers of male students and minority students, in particular Hispanic students. These increases can be attributed to a Berry’s pursuit of these populations and to increasing enrollment numbers overall.
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Andy Bressette, associate provost
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“If diversity is the goal, does it have to always be international?” asked Andy Bressette, associate provost. “What about looking at students who might bring that diverse perspective but might not be international? That may be a way to achieve the diversity goal without necessarily targeting international students, who tend to be a lot more expensive to recruit.”
Switch to D3
Berry officials agree that the switch to Division III took a toll on the numbers of international and multicultural students who have helped make the campus a more diverse place in the past. The absence of athletic scholarships has made Berry less appealing to many international students, according to Brett Kennedy, assistant vice president of enrollment management; Tasha Toy, director of multicultural and international student programs; and Bressette.
In 2008, the year before Berry began moving toward membership in NCAA Division III, there were 38 international students out of an overall student population of 1,686, or 2.3 percent. After the switch, in 2009, the number dropped to 31 out of a total student population of 1,777 students, or 1.7 percent. This year’s enrollment numbers show 19 international students out of a total population of 2,141, or less than 1 percent, and exactly half of the number from 2008.
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Brett Kennedy, assistant vice president
of enrollment management.
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“I think Berry has an assumption that having a diverse population is a positive thing but diversity evidences itself in more than different categories of people,” Kennedy said. “It’s also in the stories people bring to the table and that is something we try very hard to do.”
Despite the small numbers for minorities at Berry, Berry officials said they are not worried.
Some schools hire recruitment companies to find you X number of students of a certain ethnicity or demographic, Bressette said. “That’s a model we haven’t wanted to jump into really quickly because we have limited financial aid resources. So, instead of hiring someone to recruit 10 students from another country, we can use that same amount of money to do other things.”
For next year, Berry hopes to attract 60 Hispanic students, Kennedy said. (See separate story on Hispanics at Berry.)
Increase in Males
Also on the rise is the number of Berry undergraduates, in part the result of adding football this season. Over the past five years, the percentage of males on Berry’s campus has fluctuated between 31 and 33 percent of the total student population. That percentage shot up to 38 percent this year with the addition of football and nearly 100 male football players.
“The addition and the novelty of football have definitely influenced our numbers,” Kennedy said. “Although we don’t expect the numbers will repeat themselves in the coming years, we do expect to have a better [gender] balance overall.”
Bressette said the overarching goal in recruitment and enrollment is to attract students who can succeed at Berry, regardless of their demographics.
“We are recruiting students not just to be targets, but to be graduates,” he said. “We want to recruit a student that we believe can fully succeed here, thrive here and graduate here.”