CMU president says domestic enrollment has turned around but international numbers will keep falling, and free applications end Saturday

MOUNT PLEASANT — Central Michigan University expects its international enrollment to keep shrinking, President Neil MacKinnon said in his annual State of the University address, even as he called the school’s domestic numbers “a remarkable turnaround.”

“This is a national challenge where many international students that want to come in this country, cannot obtain visas,” MacKinnon said Wednesday in Plachta Auditorium in Warriner Hall, according to Central Michigan Life. He said India, where most of CMU’s international students come from, is among the countries hit hardest. “So sadly, we do not see this changing.”

CMU’s preliminary fall enrollment is 13,524 students, according to the university’s planning office, and international enrollment fell by 497 students from last fall, CM Life reported. The drop was the main reason total enrollment fell, as we reported when the fall numbers came out.

The domestic picture

MacKinnon said domestic enrollment grew 0.9% over the past four years while peer universities kept losing students, and that he expects it to grow over the next four. Transfer enrollment is up 26%, WJRT-TV reported. He credited CMU’s five-year strategic enrollment plan, which he said is 63% complete.

He also said CMU’s Forge the Future fundraising campaign has raised $237 million in its quiet phase, about double its previous campaign, and that staff turnover last year was 10.5%, the lowest in more than a decade.

Medical school growth in Saginaw

MacKinnon highlighted the planned College of Medicine building in Saginaw, which WJRT said will bring all of CMU’s medical students together by 2028. “This past year for our 104 slots in the medical school, we had over 8,000 applications,” he told the station. “In this new building, this will allow us to ramp up and increase that class size to produce more physicians for the state.”

Other numbers from the speech, as reported by CM Life: about 500 students took hands-on suicide prevention training last year, more than 2.5 times the year before; the Counseling Center worked with 1,083 students; and nearly $1 million has gone to more than 45 faculty and staff projects through CMU’s Go Grants. CMU joined the Detroit Promise scholarship program in 2025 and the Lansing Promise in September.

After the speech, members of the campus group Students for a Democratic Society chanted inside Warriner Hall and continued their protest outside over the university’s handling of international students, CM Life reported.

For families applying now

CMU waives its undergraduate application fee from Aug. 1 through Saturday, Oct. 31, according to its admissions page. The university uses rolling admission, recommends freshmen apply by Oct. 15 for all competitive scholarships and gives priority for first-come merit scholarship money to applications completed by Dec. 1. Applicants can use CMU’s own application or the Common Application, and veterans and service members can have the fee waived at any time with proof of service.

Sources:
Central Michigan Life, “MacKinnon touts university resilience amid enrollment challenges,” Oct. 29, 2026 (quotes, international decline of 497, domestic 0.9%, SEM 63%, Forge the Future $237 million, turnover, Saginaw building, training and counseling figures, Go Grants, Promise programs, SDS protest), https://www.cm-life.com/article/2026/10/d-news-stateoftheuniversity-10282026
WJRT-TV/abc12.com, “CMU president delivers 2026 state of the university address,” Oct. 28, 2026 (26% transfers, medical building by 2028, 104 slots and 8,000 applications quote), https://www.abc12.com/news/local/cmu-president-delivers-2026-state-of-the-university-address/article_014a76da-0592-4e22-b683-9088210b90c1.html
Central Michigan University Academic Planning and Analysis, preliminary fall 2026 statistics (13,524), https://www.cmich.edu/offices-departments/academic-planning-and-analysis
Central Michigan University, “How to apply as an incoming freshman or transfer student” (fee waived Aug. 1-Oct. 31, 2026; Oct. 15 and Dec. 1 scholarship dates; Common Application; military waiver), https://www.cmich.edu/undergraduate/apply
Photo: Cjh1452000, “Warriner Hall.JPG,” Wikimedia Commons, public domain, cropped and color-adjusted, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Warriner_Hall.JPG

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