NacMan said:
Enrollment is very slightly down. I don't have exact numbers, but I have heard from people who should know that it's by a little less than 100 students, so essentially flat.
What is interesting is that the last two freshman classes ARE the two largest in SFA history (though this year's is smaller than last year's), but overall enrollment is NOT booming as a result.
The UT system has a program called CAP, whereby students declined admission at UT Austin can enroll in a different system school and then transfer to UT-Austin after 1 year if they meet certain GPA minimum. I suspect that a large chunk of last year's huge freshmen class did exactly that and enrolled in SFA with the plan all along to transfer to Austin for year 2.
I was just about to ask about this yesterday because I was curious.
Fwiw, last time I checked the UT transfer program numbers. The vast majority of students end up staying at their first UT system institution, which gives us high caliber students who may have otherwise picked Tech/UNT/A&M etc.
I would suspect we also have some 3rd year dropoff, just based on SFA's student profile. We've got a lot of first gen and lower and middle class students and based on years past those tended to drop out after a rough sophomore or junior year.
But if we can fix that part of the funnel a bit, keep the incoming classes this large, and the sports teams keep winning, I think we're probably setup for some large chunks of growth in the next few years.
