WINONA, Minn. – This fall’s enrollment at the Winona campus of Saint Mary’s University is off 4.5%, down to 971. Enrollment management executive Timothy Albers said there is not great cause for alarm. He pointed to Saint Mary’s 80% retention rate. Four of five students returned this year, he said. The retention rate portends a solid foundation into the future, he said. Albers attributed the slippage of 49 students this fall, down from 1,020, to pandemic-driven economic hardship. Some students, he said, chose to stay closer to home for college. In a Winona Post interview, he said: “I think Saint Mary’s has done, really, pretty well.”
Albers. Vice president for enrollment management.