(La Porte, IN) - Officials at Purdue University Northwest insist there are no plans to close its campus near Westville. Instead, they’re investing in the campus and thinking of ways to reverse declining enrollment during a period of lower birth rates and high school graduates moving on to college.
That was the picture drawn by administrators during a Wednesday presentation before the La Porte County Commissioners. Commission President Connie Gramarossa thanked the administrators from the main Hammond campus for their assurances.
“I hope this really closes a lot of those rumors and I’m glad you’re looking at different opportunities and different ways of keeping the campus open,” she said.
PNW Chancellor Tom Keon said declining birth rates and fewer high school graduates attending college nationwide in recent years have been posing a challenge at many institutions of higher education. A trend of lower birth rates, which began in 2017, is not projected to get better anytime soon. In fact, Keon said, the forecast shows an even sharper decline in births nationwide beginning in 2026, with no flattening of the curve until 2036.
“There’s going to be a very steep decline in young people over the next 18 years,” he said.
One thing working in favor of the Westville-adjacent campus is that the birth rate in La Porte County is projected to decline by slightly more than two percent over the next 13 years. In comparison, Keon said that the birth rates over the same period are forecasted to drop by about 16 percent in both Lake and Porter counties.
However, the current number of students going on to college from high school in Michigan City, LaPorte, and Westville ranges from 54 to 40 percent.
Typically, Keon said, the percentages at other feeder schools in Lake and Porter counties are above 60 percent, with the highest being more than 80 percent in Munster.
“A lot of those are down 10 percent since 2015,” he said.
Enrollment at the Westville area campus has also been impacted by changes by the state legislature over the past decade or so that eliminated associate degree programs at public institutions and transferred them to Ivy Tech, per PNW Provost and Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs Kenneth “Chris” Holford.
The campus along U.S. 421 was built on associate’s degree programs in areas like nursing and technology but now offers seven four-year degree programs.
In addition, Holford said that the campus near Westville has lost students from the Indiana Department of Correction switching from universities to community colleges on who provides higher education courses to offenders. The campus used to serve inmates from Westville Correctional Facility and Indiana State Prison.
Despite the challenges, Holford said, substantial investments have been made at facilities at the Westville area campus in areas like classrooms and labs.
Adjustments in student offerings and how they’re delivered are also under review, responding to a five-year analysis of the courses provided at the campus.
Holford said the mission is still to provide the best educational experience possible at the campus while adapting to the changing times. He said one of the keys to stabilizing enrollment is better informing high school graduates about the option of completing their first two years of general studies at Westville, before advancing to the PNW campus at Hammond.
The campus in Hammond has 70 four-year degree programs.
“If we were interested in closing the campus down, we wouldn’t be looking for those types of opportunities,” Holford said.
