UHCL hits record enrollment by exceeding 9,000 students
Enrollment at UHCL has increased to a new, all-time high. The university’s student body count has exceeded 9,000 students for the second time in its history with a record 9,084 students enrolled this semester. Enrollment numbers are up across the board for every college. While the number is expected to fluctuate as students drop or are purged from the system, this number is not expected to drop by much.
Miriam Qumsieh, associate director of data management for the Office of Institutional Effectiveness, said the state-reported number might dip around 5 students at most after cleanup.
“We’re still doing data cleanup and trying to figure out what the final numbers are going to be,” Qumsieh said.
Enrollment numbers, provided by the Office of Institutional Effectiveness, for UHCL have been down since the fall of 2015. While spring 2018’s enrollment was down over 100 students from the year prior, this fall’s has increased by over 400.
Of the final headcount for students, 44.57 percent are enrolled part-time, with 55.43 percent enrolled full-time. Of those students, 72.47 percent are undergraduates, while 27.53 percent are graduate students.
The Office of Institutional Effectiveness also reports every college is up in enrollment this semester, with the College of Business seeing the largest increase at 8.1 percent, followed by Human Sciences and Humanities at 4.58 percent, Education at 3.43 percent and Science and Engineering at 1.68 percent.
Within each college at UHCL, specific programs have been gaining traction this semester as well. For the College of Business, accounting is the highest-enrolled program for fall 2018, followed by Business Administration and Healthcare Administration.
The College of Education places its undergraduate students into Interdisciplinary Studies, while its graduate students can select specialized fields, with the largest of these specialized programs being Educational Management and Counseling.
The College of Science and Engineering intends to put its new building to use this semester with Biological studies, followed by Computer Science and Computer Engineering.
For the College of Human Sciences and Humanities, the administration has stated Psychology is always a popular choice, with 2018 looking no different. Following Psychology, it appears Fitness and Human Performance, followed by Criminology are leading its enrollment numbers.
Yvette Bendeck, associate vice president of enrollment management, clarified that while the colleges are up across the board in admissions, graduate enrollment is currently slowing down in large part because of the decline in international student admissions, two demographics that are closely related.
“While the College of Human Sciences and Humanities graduate enrollment remained flat, the College of Science and Engineering’s graduate enrollment declined by 27 percent as a result of international student enrollment,” Bendeck said.
The decrease for both international and graduate student enrollments resulted in a strong hit to UHCL’s budget for the past two years, as the university receives more funding for international than domestic enrollment, as well as graduate over undergraduate enrollment.
For the past two years, UHCL has been operating with a budget deficit of more than $4 million. As a university’s budget is determined based on the enrollment numbers of the school, the increase in enrollment should result in a larger budget when the Texas House of Representatives reconvenes in January 2019.
