By Bianca Dinkha
After three years of rapid growth, Dominican University will pump the breaks on enrollment next year in response to concerns from students, faculty, staff, and the surrounding community about overcrowding on campus, particularly with parking.
Despite the national decline in college-age population, which is projected to decrease by 15% by the next five to 10 years, Dominican has remained robust. Class size has increased by approximately 66% from 2019 to 2024.
Mark Titzer, chief financial officer, anticipates a slight decrease in class size for the upcoming year. After welcoming a record-breaking 695 freshmen last year, enrollment is projected to drop to 625 this fall.
According to Jason Harmon, vice president of enrollment management, thriving academic programs, athletic recruitment, and partnerships with community-based organizations are only some of the reasons for Dominican’s success.
However, with issues concerning parking, study space availability, housing capacity, and longer waiting times at the Cyber Café, students are having a harder time securing essential spaces on campus.
Harmon states that the university recognizes the challenges of increasing enrollment and plans to keep the next freshmen class size like that of the past two years.
“We understand that we have limitations on campus,” he said. “There’s probably some more space for us to have a similar class to what we had last year, but to go much further beyond that is challenging.”
Harmon also highlights the separate associate’s degree program at the Pilsen campus, which adds more space without exceeding capacity at the River Forest campus.
“That program is another way we can add [more] students to Dominican, but not put pressure on the River Forest campus when we talk about parking, resident hall space, and classrooms,” Harmon said.
High enrollment affects all areas of campus activity including academics, housing, advising, athletics and more. Given its broad impact, the university is exploring creative ways to find space without having to build new infrastructure.
Titzer says that they are instead looking at ways to maximize space, especially with parking.
“We’re thinking about lots of ways to address parking constraints,” he said. “We’re doing some studies on where we can do some slight cut outs in some of the surface lots to put in a few more parking spaces.”
Last fall, Dominican received a lot of pushbacks from River Forest neighbors, who petitioned to restrict Park Avenue to resident parking only.
“The [Village of River Forest] has really said to us, ‘you need to solve your parking issues, and not by illegally parking in front of houses,’” Titzer said.
Senior Zayra Juarez, president of Commuter Student Association (CSA) emphasized that parking has been a significant issue for her and other commuter students.
At one point, Juarez had to park off campus despite having a parking pass. She had to find a way to commute back to her car, all while receiving a ticket, which was eventually resolved by Campus Safety.
“Although increased enrollment has helped CSA grow and be more involved on campus, as a commuter, parking has become difficult and spaces to study around campus has become limited,” she said. “Some students have said they need to get to school earlier to make sure they find a spot which makes their commute more challenging.”
For commuter students like Juarez, the decrease in enrollment next year “should help students who are currently facing challenges with parking.”
As Dominican continues to navigate these situations and try to accommodate a growing student body, the efforts to find more solutions are still underway. The university will have to tackle these constraints all while pleasing students, faculty, staff, and River Forest residents.
Contributed by Michael Del Genio
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