Bluffton University’s recent enrollment success was featured in “Inside Higher Edu,” a major international higher education publication.
The story titled “For small private colleges, a mixed year in admissions,” focused a major portion of the article on Bluffton.
Robin Bowlus, vice president of advancement and enrollment management, attributed some of the college's success to its being open for the entire year that just completed. "Students and parents had expectations," she said.
And the college resumed campus tours – again, with lots of safety measures – in May 2020, before most colleges did so.
The college's message is the Bluffton Blueprint, a general education program that students take in all four years of their education.
• The first year, the students are in a course to ask themselves, "Who am I?"
• The second year they ask, "Who am I in a community?"
• The third year they ask, "Who am I in the world?"
• And the fourth year, they ask, "What then shall we do?"
The article states that Bluffton enrolled only 173 freshmen in the fall of 2018 (the goal had been 200), 231 in 2019 and 195 in 2020 (with the pandemic in full force at the time students were making decisions).
This fall, 277 freshmen have committed. If the number stays over 266, it will be a record class.
