Goshen College ‘Seeing Fruits’ of Investment

Total student enrollment at Goshen remained steady between 2014 and 2015.

Goshen College is reporting a spike in enrollment, another increase in alumni giving and says long-time recruiting efforts are paying off. New student population at the northern Indiana private school in the fall jumped by more than 20 percent. Donations from Goshen alumni totaled nearly $3.9 million over the last year, a number that has increased each year since 2009. Though most of the school’s 839 students are from Indiana, enrollment also includes students from 15 countries.

School officials say the the Fall 2015 class is the most diverse in GC history, with 40 percent of students identifying as non-white. Elkhart County students make up 47 percent of the new class, a 16 percent increase from last year.

The number of first-year students identifying as Hispanic or Latino numbers 30 percent, a percentage that has doubled in six years. Vice President of Enrollment Management and Marketing Scott Barge says previous efforts, including a major one funded "a number of years ago" by Indianapolis-based Lilly Endowment Inc., have laid the groundwork for the higher Hispanic and Latino enrollment. He says the school is recruiting these students on a number of fronts, including community partnerships, a weekly radio show and leadership scholarships. Barge says he was surprised by the "magnitude" of Latino growth on campus and believes previous efforts to attract students from more diverse backgrounds is perhaps "paying off sooner than we had expected."