From the desk of Renay Scott
July 1, 2022

The Higher Education Department of New Mexico recently asked higher education institutions to examine recruitment, retention and completion trends for the past five years. The exercise was an opportunity to assess how closely our programs, services and outcomes align with our vision for student success and social mobility. Here are some of the key takeaways from what we learned.

1. The Lottery Scholarship is among the most important success programs for NMSU students. From 2012 to 2021, students who earned the New Mexico Legislative Lottery Scholarship returned for their second year of college at rates exceeding 90%. This is 15-20% higher than all students starting at NMSU for the first time (71.6% in the academic year 2021), and it is essentially true regardless of a student’s socio-economic status: There is virtually no achievement gap (1%) between students eligible for Federal Pell Grants and those not eligible. 
    
2. Enrollment at NMSU stabilized from 2018 to 2020 but dipped for the 2021-2022 academic year by 2.3%, although we saw a small (<1%) increase in graduate students and NMSU Online students. The pandemic and the political climate likely still affect our ability to attract local, national and international students. 
    
   • Always a reflection of many efforts and influences, retention and completion steadily increased before the COVID-19 pandemic. For the class that entered in the fall of 2019, first-year retention increased to a 15-year high of more than 75%. Graduation rates also steadily increased. 
      
   • During the COVID-19 pandemic, retention for students early in their college experience dropped, no doubt influenced at least in part by challenges associated with online education. Fall 2021 first-year retention was 71.6% (a decrease of 3.9% from the previous year); second-year retention was 63.9% (1.9% decrease). The opposite was true for more experienced students; third-year retention increased 1.1% to 57%. 
      
3. Completion rates also increased. Four-year graduation rates in 2021 increased for the third year in a row, and now exceed 32%, a recent record for NMSU. Four-year and five-year graduation rates also increased for Pell-eligible students by 2.3% and 2.8%, respectively.
    
4. NMSU has taken an innovative and aggressive approach to meeting student needs for academic programs and assisting students to earn academic credentials. Improvements that drove previous increases in recruitment, retention and completion remain in place, and, we anticipate continued increases in our metrics as pandemic concerns wane. Some educational innovations include: 
    
   • We have made efforts to better understand program costs, capacity and student demand; we have increased offerings of professional master’s degrees and our online programs. We have lowered barriers to success; for example, we are reducing curricular complexity, which gives students a more flexible pathway to a degree. 
      
   • Implementing advising software was a signature success of the 2020-2021 academic year and crucial in expanding the faculty's role in student success. Engaging students in academic and campus life is crucial in keeping students enrolled: The new web portal Crimson Connection both gave students a convenient place to learn about campus events and is helping us track the effectiveness of our programming.