EWU Retention Rate & Budget

Eastern Washington University's retention rate, according to "The Consortium for Student Retention Data Exchange" at Eastern, saw a 4.4% drop in student retention for students returning to the institution for a second year between the 2017 and 2018 school years. At an already low 74.5% retention, it dropped to 70.1% just this past year.

For the total number of undergraduate student enrolled at Eastern, according to the "Common Data Set" found on the Office of Institutional Research for EWU, in the fall of 2017 there were 11,473 undergraduate students enrolled. In the fall of 2018, there were 11,410 undergraduate students.

So, while Eastern only saw 63 less undergraduate students in the last year, the retention rate at the university is still the lowest its been in over a decade. That means that Eastern is still attracting a lot of first year students, but many students are not returning for their second year.

While I found these statistics on the university's own website, as all of this is public information, many media outlets report on Eastern Washington University's budget cut in June of 2019 of $3.6 million and the upcoming budget cut of a projected $3.5 million as a lack of student enrollment.

On October 7th, 2019, KXLY reported that "in 2018, EWU had 10,548 undergraduates enrolled. Last year, that dropped to 10,264 students. That's 284 fewer students in just one year" in an article titled "EWU facing another $3.5 million budget cut."

Earlier in 2019, The Spokesman Review published an article titled "EWU trustees approve $3.6 million budget cut; 55 tenured faculty offered voluntary buyouts" that states "EWU expects to enroll 9,585 undergraduates and 1,000 graduate students this fall – the lowest total fall enrollment since 2011, according to the presentation. Total fall enrollment peaked with 11,227 students in 2016."

Neither of these media outlets seem to be reporting accurate statistics that correlate accurately with what Eastern has published, but I wouldn't be so quick to fault the journalists on faulty statistics. Many times when using an open source search engine like Google and searching for "EWU retention rate" or "EWU Student Population" the results come back with information from third party websites or Eastern's "Fast Facts." Not to mention that "Fast Facts" just gives a a brief history of Eastern and then quickly turns to the university patting itself on its back for all the awards it has earned. It took me well over a couple hours and going and talking with different offices on campus to find exactly where information on student population was located.

So, is Eastern Washington University's falling retention rate to blame for these massive budget cuts even though student population has remained fairly stagnant over the past few years like the common narrative is portraying or is there something else that isn't being told?