Last week’s Chimes had what seemed to be an interesting cover story. A graph with eight data points showed a sharp decline next to the title “Lowest enrollment in decades.” The article was reasonable, explaining the recent decline in enrollments, specifically among FTIACs (First Time in Any College), and overall enrollment. Two things specifically stood out to me as I started to read the article:

The enrollment office’s published data goes back to 1997: nineteen years ago. The  headline “decades” implies at least 20 years. Can you really say “decades” if you only have 19 years of data? Slightly perturbed at this misdirection, I decided to put it past me. It’s not like anyone is going to wait a year to write an article just so someone pedantic like me will be satisfied. “Lowest enrollment in 19 years” doesn’t have a good ring to it. Even if the data only goes back to 1997, it is likely that enrollment was higher in the past. I’m not a stranger to the idea that higher education is losing popularity with high school graduates.

The other concern I had was with the data points. The article mentioned that this was the smallest number of FTIACs since 2004. I looked back at the graph. Clearly there was more data to be shown, since it only went back to 2008. Generally, I think the more data the better. For what reason would Chimes editor-in-chief Josh Parks not want us to see as much data? It could be laziness: after all, the image was pretty low-res (not exactly front cover material). We’ve all been busy with midterms; this can’t be too much of an exception. But the article already had me curious: What was the number of FTIACs in 2004? Is there any reason to not show 2004-2007?

The answer can be illuminated through the data. There were 97 less FTIACs in 2016 compared to 2013. In 2008, there was a slightly greater decrease of 103 FTIACs, but it happened in only one year. This brought be back to the first paragraph of the article “FTIAC enrollment [is] down significantly from the last few years.” Sure, if you limit yourself to looking at the last few years, it may seem significant, but seeing the volatility of FTIAC enrollment over the last 19 years shows only a steady decline trend, not a recent, unforeseeable drop.

But who am I to judge the student newspaper? Shock-value is huge in the news industry. Consumers have grown accustomed to it. As we wade through the clickbait articles and deceptive headlines, we already know that the truth is tamer than the headlines. Should we expect more honesty from our beloved Chimes? I don’t pretend to know.

Editor’s Note: There are indeed 20 data points between 1997 and 2016, since there are data for both endpoints, so the use of “decades” in last week’s article was accurate.