Some UW Schools See Increase In New Students

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While new student enrollment has remained flat or dipped slightly for most University of Wisconsin schools, it’s growing at others.

UW-La Crosse is welcoming its largest number of new students this year since the mid-’80s. More freshmen and transfer students are enrolling, despite the drop in the number of Wisconsin high school graduates. UW-La Crosse Chancellor Joe Gow says housing will be tight, but all freshmen will have a place to live. He says with the strong enrollment comes more tuition money that could end up in staff and faculty paychecks.

“This extra enrollment will give us a little bit more money,” says Gow. “Not a lot, but a little bit more to keep working on some of the salaries that are very, very non-competitive at UWL.”

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UW-Stout is also reporting an increase in new student enrollment. The initial enrollment numbers can change over the next few weeks, depending on who decides to take classes at the last minute or drop out.

Some schools have seen a slight enrollment decline, like UW-Milwaukee where freshmen enrollment is down 6 percent. Jeff Meece, the associate vice chancellor for enrollment management, at UW-Milwaukee, says one bright spot is that the number of transfer students is up. Most other UW schools reported similar increases.

“I think we’re going to see that as a trend over the next few years in particular,” says Meece. “A lot of it is related to cost of attendance and tuition, so students have flexibility to start at a UW two-year school or a technical college and transfer into one of the four-years.”

Meece says with the current UW tuition freeze, schools may see an increase in students enrolling in four-year universities as freshmen.