President Niemi discusses enrollment plans

By Antonio Machado

Associate Editor

By Avery Slavin

News Editor

President Nancy Niemi highlighted the University’s strong enrollment numbers and emphasized the institution's commitment to diversity and equity in the All-University Meeting on Oct. 19. 

Niemi said the University remains dedicated to diversity and the “connection between academic excellence and equity has been and will be the definition of Framingham State University. It is the foundation of FSU’s institutional legacy. 

“True academic excellence is impossible without deep institutionalized equity. If we operate from that point, we are always going to be OK, because we know where we’re working. We know where we’re going,” she added.

Niemi discussed the school's progress in meeting the goals of its Strategic Enrollment Plan, which highlights the University's values and goals and the importance of higher education for students, and she said the University’s increases in institutional financial aid have impacted enrollment. 

Niemi said students having career-connected experiences is a “road being built,” and that advising has been more successful due to more communication between students and faculty, as well as advisors being more informed about actual data. 

Local, regional, and state connections with businesses and legislators have helped FSU advance its needs, according to Niemi. She said these partnerships have “paid off in hundreds of thousands of dollars. … We want our state to know that Framingham State is here. We might be a gem, but we’re not hidden anymore.”

Niemi said the current landscape for higher education is volatile. “The financial and sociocultural realities of our students are changing, which demands that everything we're doing, we need to get even more real about our financial fragility.” 

The Strategic Enrollment Plan will continue focusing on innovation for student success, in which the University will “enhance teaching and learning in ways that advance goals for racial equity and student achievement," Niemi said. 

She said the one thing the University must do is “get learning right for everyone.

And if we do nothing more than that, because remember, learning goes hand-in-hand with equity, if that's all we do, which is what our job is, we will continue to be wildly successful.”

Niemi said the new undergraduate student enrollment increased by over 10% this year. FSU enrolled 855 new students this year, compared to last year’s 773. Of these new students, 597 are first-time first-year students and the other 258 are transfer students. 

Niemi said 59% of the new students were female and 40% were male. 

Of the incoming class, 62% are first generation students, she said. 

The percentage of students of color in the incoming class is 59%, and the percentage of residential students is 80%, she said. 

She said 55% of Undergraduate students are living on campus, and the resident halls are 92% full.

“If it feels livelier on campus, both in the day and the night, it's true. Our students are being students, and they're having a good time. I hear it,”  Niemi said.

Additionally, 64% of the new class met the criteria for the FSU Tuition Promise, she said.

The FSU Tuition Promise is a program that grants a student free tuition granted their family income is less than or equal to $85,000. 

She said, the FSU Tuition Promise “has been an extraordinary driver, we think, because of course, we don't have students tell us that this is exactly why they came, but as I said, it's the closest we come to causality for some of our increased enrollment.”

Niemi said that even families that would typically be considered middle-class still need aid, and it’s important to know how many students continue to rely on it. She said it will cost the school more to increase students’ financial aid, and there might have to be something given up in order to do so.

“What do we give up to give more financial aid? Do we run at a deficit? Do we ask the board for more? Do we get more from the state? Probably not. So those are decisions that will need to be made. Do we want students or do we want money? And sometimes, that's a hard question to answer,” she said. 

Niemi announced the University’s retention rate, or the percentage of students who come back after their first year, is 76% for the 2025 cohort - the highest it's been in years. 

The fall-to-fall persistence rate, meaning they continue until graduation, is 79%, which is the highest it's been since before the pandemic in 2020. She said the percentage is not a perfect one-to-one match due to some students staying in their first or second year longer. 

Niemi said part of the strategic enrollment management work is the academic program portfolio, which asks about the “national landscape. What are other schools doing? What are universities doing? How is the national political landscape affecting what people do in academia?

“It’s fine to build a nice, shiny new program, but it's another thing to stick to our mission and figure out what our students need, what our world needs, and how we put our education and equity together to help make that happen,” she added. 

Niemi said the New England Commission of Higher Education is going to be working with FSU on a two-year focused evaluation report that is primarily assessing the institution. They will come back for a five-year report, and then a 10-year report. 

Niemi added the University continues to be a majority-minority institution. “It's really important for us to embrace that and to know it, because it shapes everything that we do as we move towards equity.”

She said, “We tend to think about equity as race and gender, and we cannot forget that accessibility and disability and student achievement are also all part of the same thing, and we continue to pay attention to those equity practices.”

Niemi said the search for a new Vice President of Equity and Inclusion is underway and the position should be filled in late winter or early spring. 

She said the University is focusing on its community engagement and the impact it has on its immediate neighbors. “We're connecting with the region in ways we previously have not done, regional towns and partners.”

Niemi said the university is focusing on relationships with businesses in the surrounding area through the RAMS rewards program. 

She said, “We're giving discounts. We're having students have discounts. All of you can have discounts. We're making relationships with businesses in the area. We’re having businesses visit our campus, and making that barrier disappear.

“They know who we are now, we're going to keep pushing on that,” she added.

The Campus Master Plan does not have the appropriate funding yet, according to Niemi, but there are components of it the school is already undertaking, such as space changes involving the bookstore, fitness center, and Rams Resource Center.

The Linsley Hall redevelopment, which will eventually house faculty and staff, is “costing more than we’d like, but we’re getting it together, and that project will still happen,” Niemi said. 

Niemi discussed the topic of AI, saying it “would be unwise to create a unified policy for AI on the whole campus for absolutely everything. We want coherence and capability, but not conformity of use.”

She said the University will not tell students and faculty how to use AI, and rather it will be left to each division and classroom depending on needs.