September 14, 2006

By Lauren Heaton

Antioch College got an auspicious start to the academic year last week with an entering class of 133 students, more than twice as large as last year’s, according to Antioch Executive Vice-President Rick Jurasek. The new class is also made up of students who have higher test scores and a higher high school class rank, and who are statistically more likely than the students of previous classes to remain at Antioch and graduate, he said.

Antioch is embarking on the second year of the new interdisciplinary curriculum that was part of the college’s Renewal Plan mandated by the Antioch University Board of Trustees in 2004. The new Antioch, which boasts cluster courses taught by a team of professors from different disciplines and tight-knit co-ops in three sites around the country, attracted a freshman class that Dean of Faculty Andrzej Bloch predicted last spring would be between 120 and 150 students.

The students who came, according to Jurasek, are better prepared for college.

“The empirical evidence, based on class rank, grade point average, SAT and ACT scores, shows the student body of this year’s incoming class is more academically prepared,” Jurasek said.

Nothing about the standards Antioch uses to select its students has changed since the college implemented its new curriculum last year, Jurasek said. What has changed, he said, is the image prospective students have of Antioch College.

“Those who chose us came with different academic criteria,” Jurasek said. “The market perception of us has changed; it’s clear different customers are choosing us.”

Antioch took deliberate measures last year to advertise itself clearly as not just an “alternative,” “non-mainstream” school but also an institution with high academic standards, he said.

“The message is getting out that Antioch College is not simply an alternative path, it is an academically rigorous path in higher education,” he said. “It should not be an either/or. You don’t have to surrender academic rigor when you embrace an alternative system.”

Antioch is pleased with the shift in student body because the numbers that indicate academic preparedness are a good indicator of commitment to the institution through to matriculation, Jurasek said.

The college was able to make its budget this year while awarding 100 percent of its incoming students some type of federal, state or institutional financial aid, Jurasek said. In an average financial package, according to Financial Aid Director Robin Heise, Antioch is able to cover about 30 percent of the $34,000 cost for tuition, room and board for one year.

This is also the first year Antioch has been able to offer to qualified students a full year of Antioch College Work Study money, in addition to what students make through the Federal Work Study Program (FWSP).

The class that entered Antioch in the fall of 2005 received a similar amount of help through financial aid, but the numbers were smaller because not as many students applied. With little time to advertise the new curriculum before last year’s entering students chose Antioch, the college brought in approximately 64 first-year students, much lower than its average admissions, according to Doug Weimer, the Antioch College registrar.

Many of those students left the first semester, and by the end of the 2005–06 academic year, according to Bloch, 48 or 49 were still registered. This fall, Weimer said, 44 of those students were considered still “active,” including four who were on leave and six who weren’t yet registered. The retention rate for that class between freshman and sophomore years is about 68 percent, better than the 61 percent for the class that entered in 2003 and 63 percent for the class that came in 2004.

Antioch currently has 353 students enrolled at the college this fall, including the new class. Jurasek attributed this year’s larger freshman class size to several factors, beginning with the appeal of the new curriculum. The college also relied more heavily last year than previous years on the Internet as a dominant venue by which to publicize the school.

The college expects the number of entering students to continue to increase in the years to come, Jurasek said.

Contact: lheaton@ysnews.com