AN ENROLMENT record which has not been seen since the mid-80s when MMSU was still starting to grow, has been set.

Based on data gathered from the Registrar’s Office as of press time, June 23, the university has a total enrolment of 10,945, registering an 8.8 percent increase over last year’s 10,081. The figures are expected to even go upward as late enrollees continue to come in trickles.

All colleges, except one, experienced an increase in enrolment. The College of Business, Economics, and Accountancy (CBEA) has the biggest upsurge at 18.34 percent, with the College of Engineering (CoE) coming in second with 12.27 percent.

The College of Agriculture and Forestry’s (CAF) enrolment is up by 12 percent, attributed to the many available scholarship grants in agriculture and the booming enrolment in the hospitality management program which attracted 200 first year students. Only on its second year, the program’s 306 registrants form bulk of CAF’s total population of 766. The enrolment rise at CAF happened even as the agricultural engineering and development communication programs, previously with the college, have been transferred to the College of Engineering and to the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS), respectively.

Although CIT figures show a slight decrease in enrolment at 4.76 percent, it remains one of the most populated colleges. With 1,360 students, CIT is trailing behind CHS which has 1,705 and CBEA’s 1,658. Nursing remains the most preferred course at CHS with 1,008 takers. CBEA programs with the biggest enrolment are management accounting, marketing management, and tourism management.

CAS is looking up not only due to its 11.49 enrolment increase but also because three of its course offerings (B.A. Sociology and B.S. Mathematics) previously frozen because of lack of enrolment are now reopened, and with the transfer of the development communication program, which was also previously temporarily closed. The ceramic engineering program of COE is also reopened.

Dr. Wilma C. Natividad, university registrar and admissions officer, attributes the increase to the successful outreach campaigns conducted by the colleges. On top of all these, Dr. Natividad says, MMSU’s reputation of excellence continues to attract qualified students to enroll in the university.

A contributory factor, Dr. Natividad adds, is MMSU’s tuition fee rates which are way lower than those in the private schools.

Weena Guiang-Franco, who teaches sociology of education at CAS, offers an alternative explanation. She posits that schools appear impervious to the financial crunch because Filipinos, who see education as a tool to alleviate poverty, go to school because of, not in spite of, the crisis. Besides, Guiang-Franco says, \"Ilocanos may tighten the belt on many things but education remains a priority.\" She noted that enrolment figures in the late 1990s remained bright despite the Asian economic meltdown experienced at that time.

Ironically, the biggest slump came in Academic Year 2001-2002 when the country started to bounce back from the crisis. Enrolment was 14 percent lower than in the previous year.

Earlier this year, every college visited public and private high schools in the province to inform graduating students of the university’s course offerings. The College of Arts and Sciences, for instance, mounted an aggressive outreach campaign which spanned Sinait town in Ilocos Sur to Pagudpud, Ilocos Norte.