A total of 335 new students joined the Knox community this fall. 302 are new first-year students, and 33 are transfer students.
This brings the total number of degree-seeking students at Knox to 1,102.
These numbers, provided by Vice President for Admission and Dean of Enrollment Nathan Ament, were based on the ten-day enrollment period. Like most colleges, Knox uses the tenth day of a given term as the marker to determine enrollment numbers, ensuring accurate and consistent counts and avoiding the very start of the term, when numbers may still be in flux.
While this new cohort of students is the 27th largest first-year class in Knox’s 188-year history, numbers have dropped since last year’s group of over 400 new students, which was not only the third largest, but also had the highest number of new international students in Knox history.
The total number of students at Knox has decreased only slightly from last year’s total of 1,118 students. With the record-setting new class last year, the student population had risen sharply from having 995 students total in the 2023-24 school year.
Despite having fewer new students this year, Knox’s total enrollment has not dropped dramatically because the retention rate, meaning the percentage of returning students who came back to Knox, was high.
Still, 65 students who were previously enrolled did not return to Knox this year. Fourteen were international students.
Ament listed several factors that are impacting enrollment at Knox, some of which are bringing in new students and some that are becoming barriers to enrollment.
Some factors involve successful staff efforts to recruit new students.
“Internal factors included strategic investments in admissions operations and tactics, such as new staff; working with EAB, the country’s leading enrollment management services company; an increase in digital advertising; the introduction of the Prairie Promise, which meets the full need of Illinois students; and the addition of regional admission representatives in key enrollment markets like Chicago, Denver, and Texas, among others,” Ament said in a written statement.
Even so, Ament acknowledged that students and the institution are facing challenges caused by political and demographic factors.
“External factors include last year’s disruption with the FAFSA rollout, the national and international political climate, changes and disruptions to visa and overall immigration policies, and the dropoff in the number of high school graduates starting in 2026, which is known as the enrollment cliff,” Ament said.
The enrollment cliff, also referred to as the demographic cliff, results from a significant decline in birth rates across the country that began with the onset of the Great Recession in 2007. While the U.S. birth rate has been increasing in recent years, it has still not reached levels seen before 2007. This fall marked the first year that kids born in 2007 or after would be traditionally college-age. Colleges throughout the country are expected to enroll fewer students in the coming years, in part because there are simply fewer eighteen-year-olds.
Along with the demographic cliff, the Trump administration’s changes are causing even more barriers to what is considered an already expensive and exclusionary educational system. Visa restrictions and cancellations, travel bans, and deportations are affecting international students throughout the country and are making it more difficult for prospective international students to enroll.
Knox’s incoming class last year included 148 international students, which was about 34% of first-year students. This year, only about 27% of first years are international students (89 out of 335).
As colleges navigate political and demographic changes and their effects in the coming years, enrolling and retaining students remains an important factor in the functioning of the institution.
According to Ament, Knox’s goal is to enroll 340 first-years and 35 transfer students next year.
More enrollment statistics from the last few years can be found in the Common Data Set, a publicly available survey that most colleges and universities participate in.
