A more accurate reporting of EIU's issues would include data like this, which shows where most of the issue resides and that's on EIU's inability to attract or retain students. Enrollment for the past decade has dropped every year while state taxpayer funding per student has been steady and recently even went up. A likely scenario is this enrollment drop exposed bad financial decisions that weren't corrected or corrected fast enough by those in charge at EIU. This ultimately led to the job losses more than the state funding, which has been steady per student for some time.
2016 was at least a 20-year record decline, so 2017 is almost guaranteed to look better by comparison and will be spun that way. A five-year average of declines would roughly project that the 2017 enrollment will drop 7.68% or 581 students to 6834 total students, just going on as normal. So while "only" losing 581 students instead of 1105 can be made to sound good, isn't that great of accomplishment when you are still trending down and not fixing any of the issues.
2016 was at least a 20-year record decline, so 2017 is almost guaranteed to look better by comparison and will be spun that way. A five-year average of declines would roughly project that the 2017 enrollment will drop 7.68% or 581 students to 6834 total students, just going on as normal. So while "only" losing 581 students instead of 1105 can be made to sound good, isn't that great of accomplishment when you are still trending down and not fixing any of the issues.
