University Colleagues,

On behalf of the Division of Enrollment Management, I am pleased to present DePaul’s 2020 enrollment summary, an annual report that describes the university’s current enrollment position, student profile and trajectory over recent years. I hope the information on the following pages will impress upon you—as it has for me—the remarkable outcomes achieved by our DePaul community, which has worked together to imagine new possibilities and take action against impossible odds.

Many of our enrollment efforts were well underway before March 2020, as were the challenges and upheavals facing the higher education sector. The onset of the pandemic heightened our existing challenges, introduced many new ones and took away the luxury of time to create solutions. It also awakened the best in us as a community and helped us to see that change is the only constant, especially when it comes to enrollment. In a fall when postsecondary enrollment declined 3.3% nationally, DePaul enrolled 21,922 students—which represents a 0.6% loss over the previous year. This remarkable outcome is the direct result of the smart, dedicated and relentless work of many of our colleagues—each of whom have my gratitude—as well as our unyielding focus on what matters most to us all: our students.

Freshman enrollment is one of the highlights of our 2020 enrollment portfolio. We enrolled the largest freshman class in university history with 2,774 new first-year students, topping our previous record set in 2019 by 147 students and surpassing our budgeted headcount goal by 4.7%. The freshman cohort is one of the most diverse in DePaul’s history, with 49% who are students of color, 32% who are Pell-grant eligible, 34% who are first-generation students and 32% who are from outside Illinois.

New master’s student enrollment remained strong. The 1,732 new master’s students who started this fall represent a 6.7% increase over last year. Overall graduate enrollment of 7,106 stands at 99.2% of the budgeted headcount goal and three students greater than last year. The colleges of Business, Education, Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, and Science and Health increased their overall graduate enrollment headcount over last year.

These strong new student outcomes were not enough to offset an overall decrease in continuing undergraduate students. This steady decline in the undergraduate student body tells us that we need to become more effective as a community in ensuring that a larger proportion of our continuing students persist and complete their college degree at DePaul.

The pandemic has taught us that there is power in our collective will and that we can achieve ambitious goals by thinking boldly and implementing decisive change. There has never been a better time or a greater need for us to band together using that collective will and our professional acumen to achieve our new student enrollment and continuing student re-enrollment goals. I am encouraged by and grateful for the university’s response to these enrollment goals and new challenges, and I believe that we can and will achieve great things together.

Thank you for your dedication to our students. Thank you for the communities that you nurture. Thank you for your resilience and creativity. Herein lies our hope for the future.