Stability in numbers
SUNY enrollment figures show mixed results
Trending
SUNY Fredonia's enrollment decline continues, though the pace of the drop eased for a third straight September.
Enrollment vice president Kathryn Kendall offered a report at the first University Council meeting of the 2026-27 school year, which showed a student body at 3,108 students as of Sept. 21.
That's down 76 students from the September 2025 "head count" of campus enrollees. The count was 3,201 in September 2024, and 3,236 in September 2023.
However, that is at least an improvement from 2019-2022 when SUNY Fredonia lost hundreds of students each year. In 2019, the school had 4,463 students.
The SUNY system's head count target for the Fredonia campus this year was 3,017, so the school hit that benchmark.
Fredonia did not hit the SUNY goal for undergraduate students. SUNY hoped for 2,617 undergrads, but Fredonia has 2,548 this school year.
Kendall emphasized "notable" growth in transfer and graduate and students.
"For the most part, we've been able to kind of stabilize the loss" in enrollment, she said. "Although we are still sliding a little bit, we are doing tremendously better than we were."
She noted that it is a challenge to attract students to Fredonia when they can attend dozens of other SUNY campuses for the same tuition.
SUNY Fredonia President Stephen Kolison later said new programs on campus will make a big difference "in attracting a certain type of student."