Enrollment down at NIU, but freshman class grows

Northern Illinois University says fall enrollment is down by almost 5 percent but its incoming freshman class is larger than last year’s.

The university said Wednesday that overall enrollment is down 4.9 percent to 21,869 students. New freshman enrollment is up 2.9 percent to 2,664.

Northern Illinois President John Peters says the decline in overall enrollment follows several years of smaller incoming classes. Peters said that trend may hold overall enrollment down for the short term even as freshman enrollment increases.

The biggest freshman enrollment growth is in NIU’s engineering, education and business schools.