As of Friday, UTRGV’s preliminary enrollment numbers show a total of 26,077 students for the spring, a 8.78 percent decrease from last fall. Additionally, the graduate school expects 3,034 attendees, an increase from previous years.
Last fall, the university had 28,588 students, resulting in a 9.2 percent increase in UTRGV’s retention rate from Fall 2016.
Maggie Hinojosa, vice president for Strategic Enrollment, said the decrease in the overall number of students is typical for this time of year.
“Spring is always a decrease from the fall,” Hinojosa said. “Across the country, you never see an increase from fall to spring. That [is] typically based on the fact that spring is not the time that you’re bringing in new students. Seniors in high school graduate in June and July, so you’re bringing them in the fall. Spring goes down a bit and, obviously, summer is much smaller.”
Freshmen make up about 25 percent of the student population and returning students make up the other 75 percent, according to Hinojosa. In Fall 2017, the university posted a 14 percent increase in freshmen.
The university will utilize new technology to improve communication with prospective students.
“Some of the things we have done differently is implement a new communications relationship management system that not only allows us to better track our communications to prospective students, but will even allow us to, for example, let’s say we sent an email out to a prospective student, we could see if they opened the email or not,” Hinojosa said.
UTRGV will also send recruiters to San Antonio to increase diversity within the school.
“We are also in the process of hiring a recruiter that will be housed in the San Antonio area to scout for students,” she said. “We do [recruitment] outside of the [Rio Grande] Valley, but this person would actually be housed in the San Antonio area.”
Of this semester’s 26,077 expected attendees, 22,885 are undergraduate and 102 in the medical school. Graduate school preliminary enrollment is 3,090. Of these, 2,854 are seeking a master’s degree and 236 are pursuing doctoral degrees.
Some of the most popular graduate programs are business administration, special education, educational leadership, and science and health science.
From Fall 2016 to Fall 2017, the graduate school experienced an increase of two students.
In a November email, UTRGV President Guy Bailey informed the school’s faculty and staff about the decline in graduate enrollment.
Dave Jackson, dean of the Graduate College, said the decline in graduate enrollment is impactful on the university’s funding.
“We get funded based on the number of students we have enrolled and that funding is what is called Formula Funding,” Jackson said. “Depending on the program and the level of the student, we get funded differently. For example, we get a higher amount of funding for a student in a business program than a student in one of the liberal arts programs. Also, we get more money for a student doing a master’s than an undergraduate degree.”
From Fall 2015 to Fall 2016, the university experienced a decrease in graduate enrollment, from 3,647 students to 3,072.
“When graduate enrollment fell like it did between 2015 and 2016, when we had that huge drop of 15 percent, that impacted us significantly more than what the numbers seemed on the surface,” Jackson said.
He said graduate enrollment for the spring is expected to surpass that of the previous two fall semesters.
Updated enrollment numbers can be found at the Office of Strategic Analysis and Institutional Reporting page on UTRGV’s website, https://www.utrgv.edu/sair/.
