UW reaches lowest enrollment since the late 1980s

CASPER — Fall enrollment at the University of Wyoming continues to slide and has reached its lowest point in decades, but the school’s most recent census provided some good news for university leaders as they look to reverse worrying attendance trends. 

UW recorded jumps in both graduate and transfer students, while the school’s freshman retention rate also increased this fall, the university announced last month. 

Yet even with the gains, UW’s overall enrollment continued to decline, marking the fifth consecutive year enrollment at Wyoming’s flagship school has fallen. 

Every fall, UW performs a census on the 15th day of classes after tuition is due and class deadlines have passed. The university collects a range of data on its student body, everything from the programs students are enrolled in to their residency. 

Transfers increased by more than 8%, and UW added roughly 3% more graduate students this year, according to a press release. 

The number of students from Wyoming attending the school also rose by 4% compared to fall 2022. 

For UW, the growth in transfer students marks a significant turnaround. Since 2017, new transfers to the university have fallen by more than a quarter. 

The 2663 graduate students attending UW this fall also marks the highest number since 2016. 

Chad Baldwin, a UW spokesperson, attributed the rise in transfer students in part to the work that UW has done to attract students. For the first time ever, UW launched an ad campaign aimed specifically at transfer students ahead of this year, he said. 

“It’s certainly a very positive thing we’d like to see become a trend,” Baldwin said. 

While there are signs that UW may be reversing some of its recent enrollment declines, the boost in both transfer and graduate students still did not overcome the loss of out-of-state freshmen. 

After a roughly 10% increase last fall, this year’s freshman class shrunk by 10%, including a 14.4% slump in out-of-state freshmen. The number of Wyoming residents heading to UW as freshmen also fell by roughly 7%, though that’s after UW recorded its second-largest in-state class ever last year. 

Overall, UW’s enrollment dropped by 1.7% to approximately 10,900 students. 

To find the last time UW had fewer than 11,000 students at the start of the school year, you have to go all the way back to fall of 1987. 

“We’re certainly pleased that our transfer numbers rebounded nicely this fall, but the drop in first-time students, especially nonresidents, is not what we had expected at this time a year ago,” Kyle Moore, UW’s vice provost for enrollment management, said in a press release. 

“We continue to see some difficulty in recruiting and retaining students from outside Wyoming since the pandemic,” Moore said. “It’s an issue we are working hard to address, recognizing that universities across the country are having similar challenges as college enrollment nationwide has dropped.” 

The coronavirus pandemic led to sharp declines in enrollment. From 2017 to 2021, four-year public colleges lost more than 230,000 students, according to data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, a nonprofit that studies higher education.

That was on top of the slide colleges were already experiencing, with undergraduate enrollment in the U.S. falling by 9% between 2009 and 2020, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. 

While UW is not alone, it has struggled more than other colleges. 

Both Colorado State University and Montana State University saw their enrollment fall sharply in 2020, but they have since rebounded to pre-pandemic figures, according to school data. 

The sustained decline of UW’s student body since the 2018 – 2019 school year largely tracks the fall in out-of-state students. 

In 2017, UW had nearly 800 international students, but that figure has consistently declined and stood at fewer than 500 at the start of last year. 

Among the most visible changes has been the drop in students from Wyoming’s southern neighbor. Since 2019, the number of UW students from Colorado has fallen by more than 350, according to UW’s most recent enrollment data. 

Baldwin said UW has few clear answers for why out-of-state students have turned away from Wyoming, but he pointed to students across the country staying home for college during the pandemic, a trend backed by data from the National Center for Education Statistics. 

Over the last year, school officials have increasingly focused on UW’s declining enrollment, as well as lagging retention rates, as a problem that needs addressing. Student recruitment and retention have become frequent topics at university board meetings as trustees push for greater financial independence from the state. 

In a July email to university staff, UW Provost Kevin Carman announced a schoolwide effort to solve what he said were the school’s “enrollment challenges.” 

In his email, Carman said Ruffalo Noel Levitz, a national higher education consulting firm, would work with UW’s Enrollment Management, Student Affairs and Academic Affairs departments, as well as President Ed Seidel’s cabinet, to develop a “strategic enrollment plan.” 

The group will analyze everything from individual programs to the students that the school attracts with a target date of April 2024 for the finished plan. 

Moore said in a statement that the university has upped its recruitment and marketing in the region and across the country. Trustees have put additional money toward marketing and sought to support the university’s broader enrollment work, Baldwin said. 

“There’s a clear emphasis from our administration to try to reverse the decline that we’ve seen since COVID,” he said. 

As school leaders search for solutions, they do have one recent success story they can use as a launch point. 

In 2022, UW introduced “Saddle Up,” a mandatory weeklong preparation camp for incoming freshmen. Carman told trustees last month that the program has already shown tangible benefits for student retention. UW returned 77.7% of last year’s freshmen this fall, up from 75.4%, Carman said, while only roughly half of the 55 students who didn’t participate in Saddle Up last year returned to school this fall. 

“The numbers show that that has had a very positive impact,” Baldwin said. 

Even as it struggles with enrollment, Moore said that UW “remains a tremendous value,” offering students higher starting salaries than other schools with limited student debt. 

Though UW’s enrollment push is just beginning, Baldwin said the mission is clear. 

“We want to grow our overall enrollment,” he said. “And that means we’re going to need to get more students from out of state as well as in state.”