UW struggles with post-pandemic enrollment, retention

CASPER — The University of Wyoming continues to struggle with falling enrollment and retention rates as fewer students seek out and stay in Laramie for their college education. 

UW Provost Kevin Carman addressed ongoing enrollment concerns at Wyoming’s only four-year university in an email last week to university staff and announced a schoolwide effort to solve what he described as the school’s “enrollment challenges.” 

Forecasts suggest the school’s total enrollment at the start of the fall semester will be down 5% from 2022, while the school’s fall 2023 freshman class projects to be 15% smaller. 

At the same time, the university’s estimates show “significant” year-over-year drops in both non-resident transfer students and continuing students, Carman told staff. 

The number of graduate students is also down. 

“While our enrollment challenges are largely linked to a decline in new incoming students, we clearly have challenges in retaining our students once they are here,” he wrote. 

Carman’s announcement is yet another sign that Wyoming’s flagship school has been unable to reverse its recent enrollment trend. For decades, UW’s student population has largely fluctuated between 12,000 and 13,000 students. 

But total enrollment at UW has declined by 11% since 2018, Carman said. 

The 11,100 students UW counted at the start of the fall 2022 semester mark the university’s lowest attendance since the 1997-1998 school year, according to school data. 

“The biggest issues with student recruitment since the pandemic have been with nonresident recruitment,” Chad Baldwin, a spokesperson for UW, said in an email. 

UW is not alone. Colleges across the country have been slow to recover their pre-pandemic numbers. Though declines have begun to level off, schools have roughly 1 million fewer students than they did in spring 2020, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. 

The recent pandemic drops are only a continuation of a broader trend as fewer students pursue traditional higher education. 

Undergraduate enrollment fell by 9% between 2009 and 2020, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. 

At UW, student declines have not been ubiquitous. 

In 2018 and 2019, the university counted its biggest freshman classes in history, Baldwin said. 

Vice Provost for Enrollment Management Kyle Moore also said in a press release last September that UW’s fall 2022 in-state freshman class was larger than the university has been recording over the last decade. 

“Retention has been a particular issue, especially during and since the pandemic,” Baldwin said. “Another challenging issue is the fact that the number of Wyoming high school graduates has been and is expected to be relatively flat.” 

To address the university’s contraction, Carman told staff that the school’s Enrollment Management, Student Affairs and Academic Affairs departments, as well as President Ed Seidel’s cabinet, were working with Ruffalo Noel Levitz, a national higher education consulting firm, to develop a “strategic enrollment plan.” 

The group will dissect everything from individual programs within the university to the student populations that the school attracts, Carman said. UW will start on the plan early this fall with school officials, eyeing April 2024 for its finish. 

In the meantime, the university will look for ways to begin improving its enrollment. 

“There are many factors that determine a student’s decision to enroll and ultimately to stay and continue their education at UW,” Carman wrote. “We will be looking comprehensively at all of them and making strategic adjustments that will help us enhance enrollment while simultaneously fulfilling our fundamental mission of helping students achieve their goals.” 

UW’s shrinking student population has been a consistent topic for school officials this year. During the UW Board of Trustees’ January meeting, Carman told trustees that the school needed to find a way to incentivize university programs that grow their enrollment. 

In March, board appointees David Fall, Kermit Brown, Laura Schmid-Pizzato and Jim Mathis told the Senate Education Committee that building up UW’s student body was part of their formula to make the school more financially independent from the state. 

In his email, Carman shared concern about the position UW is in, but he also expressed optimism that the school could address its enrollment problems. 

“As we go forward, it’s important that the campus community knows the challenges we face, while also recognizing the opportunities before us,” he wrote. “If we come together as a campus community – faculty, staff, and administration – I am confident that we will set UW on a path for prosperity.”