University reports overall enrollment increase, available data contends

This story has been updated to reflect updated numbers.

 

Overall university enrollment dropped for the fourth year in a row, a decrease of 0.04 percent.

According to the university 9,025 undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in classes for this fall. Last year, 9,029 undergraduate and graduate students enrolled.

These numbers do not include high school students who are enrolled in dual-credit courses. That number fell as well, down from an estimated 1,900 in 2015 to 1,668 this year.

When including CAP students, enrollment dropped 2.16 percent. The Fall 2015 enrollment with CAP was 10,929 students according to last year’s news release and in 2016 there are 10,693 in total.

The number of incoming freshmen decreased to 1,685 from nearly 1,700 students.

The average GPA for those students was a 3.37, the highest for the university.

One area in which the university did see an enrollment increase was graduate students.

This year 1,068 students are enrolled in graduate programs, the largest enrollment for the graduate program overall.

The increase is due in part to the addition of the online MBA program offered in the Romain College of Business according to the press release.

“We knew there was a strong need for an accessible online MBA program, but we didn’t foresee how popular it would be,” President Linda Bennett said in a university news release. “With an enrollment of 88 students in its first cohort, the new online degree program has tripled our expectations. We’ve also seen a strong upward trend in enrollment, both new and returning students, across our 14 graduate programs.”

When The Shield requested the raw enrollment data from University Communications it was told by John Farless, director of university communications, that the only data currently available was included in the news release.

He said the detailed report would be available later in the month once the data was finalized.

The story will be updated as more information becomes available.