Jon Baker posted the following to the Antioch College Alumni & Community Facebook group.
This page has seen extensive discussion on the status of Antioch College, as well as (in my opinion) well deserved criticism of its president, Jane Fernandes. Some folks have complained about the lack of hard facts about the College’s status. With that in mind, I went out to see what I could find.
The College publishes some, but not a lot, of statistics. I used these wherever possible, though other websites were much more informative. I note the source of data wherever possible. I know College staff reads this page so please send me a PM is you find any errors.
Let’s begin with the number of students:
For the 2025 academic year, Antioch received approximately 138 applications, admitted 123 students, but enrolled only 17 students. While the acceptance rate was high — 89.13% — the yield rate (the percentage of admitted students who enroll) was low — 13.82%.
Overall, once the College started charging tuition the yield has varied, but has decreased the last four years.
- In 2020-21 the yield was 27.67%, a 14.19% increase.
- In 2021-22 the yield was 21.19%, a 6.48% decrease.
- In 2022-23 the yield was 18.49%, a 2.70% decrease.
- In 2023-24 the yield was 17.07%, a 1.42% decrease.
- In 2024-25 the yield was 13.82%, a 3.25% decrease.
So, what does this mean for actual enrollment? For the last five years, the number of entering freshman has been:
- In 2020-21, 44 new students.
- In 2021-22, 32 new students.
- In 2022-23, 27 new students.
- In 2023-24, 35 new students.
- In 2024-25, 17 new students.
Source — www.collegetuitioncompare.com
The College has a major push on right now to enroll 175 new students to help celebrate its 175th year of operation. The College claims to be 76% of the way to reaching this goal.
There have been multiple attempts by alumni to aide in student recruitment — almost always rejected or just plain ignored by the Admissions Office and its director. After years of dismal performance it appears he has finally been removed.
So, how did the students do? The College tracks its student retention and graduation rates and publishes this data on its website. However, the most recent figures are from 2011. There is no data for the last five years!
College Factual (www.collegefactual.com) reported 2023 figures showing only 12% of students graduated after four years and 24% after six year. Edsmart.org has more current figures from the U.S. Department of Education’s College Scorecard. They show an improvement with a 41.2% six-year graduation rate. The national average for four-year colleges is 61.1% as reported by Inside Higher Ed (insidehighered.com).
