Online enrollment on the rise

From staff reports

The WSU Global Campus, a virtual community through which the university offers online courses, experienced a 17 percent enrollment hike fall 2014, as reported by the WSU Office of Institutional Research.

Graduate enrollment at the Global Campus rose from 482 students in 2013 to 720 in fall 2014, an increase of 49.4 percent.

WSU Provost and Executive Vice President Dan Bernardo points to the College of Business for the increase in graduate enrollment.

“Mainly the EMBA (Executive Master of Business Administration) and MBA (Master of Business Administration) have increased dramatically,” Bernardo said. “A lot of that has to do with the rankings that those two programs have received by various outlets. The online MBA has been ranked in the top seven in the nation in the last few years.”

In 2013, WSU decided to charge a single tuition rate for both non-resident and resident students enrolled at the Global Campus.

“When you’re considering competing in the online education arena, you have to be price competitive,” explained Bernardo. “Students have many, many options. That decision put our online programs at the global marketplace.”

The Global Campus has 22.5 percent of graduate students enrolled who self-identify as ethnic minorities, the highest figure of any WSU campus.

As reported by the Office of Institutional Research, this figure also increased in fall 2014 from 20.5 percent in 2013.

Undergraduate enrollment at the Global Campus rose 8.9 percent, from 1,894 to 2,062 students.

Bernardo believes that the Global Campus offers a high-quality experience equivalent to that of being on-campus in Pullman.

“Same quality, but different media, if you will,” Bernardo said. “It is delivered with our mainstream faculty, as compared to many other universities that do not employ mainline faculty to deliver these classes.”

Overall, WSU has reached an enrollment of 28,686 in fall 2014, an all-time high for the university.