After years of enrollment lull, are students finally returning to Kansas universities?

Kansas' public universities are showing some promising signs of an enrollment rebound after having seen long trends of enrollment declines or slumps over much of the past decade.

Headcount enrollment at the six state universities increased for the first time since 2019, growing by 1,467 students, or 1.7%, to 89,881.

Similarly, full-time equivalent enrollment — or the total number of credit hours taken divided by the 15 hours considered to be a full slate of classes over a semester — also increased 1.5%, to 59,558 FTE.

Regents president and CEO Blake Flanders wrote in a statement that it was encouraging to see enrollment growth across Kansas' public higher education system.

“With initiatives such as increased student financial aid, a common general education package, and growing opportunities for students to participate in applied learning and internships, our system has made important strides to increase affordability, access and success and begin to reverse a long trend of declining enrollment," Flanders said. "We look forward to continuing this work and serving Kansas families and businesses."

K-State sees first enrollment increase in almost a decade

At K-State, the university saw a small 0.1% increase in headcount to 19,269 across its Manhattan, Salina and Olathe campuses.

Even though the increase was small, it was a significant change for K-State as the university has made aggressive efforts to reverse trends of severe enrollment declines that had brought the institution to its lowest enrollment in the past two decades.

"This year's increases are a direct result of our commitment to the strategic enrollment plan," said Karen Goos, vice provost for enrollment management at K-State. "The past two years have seen tremendous progress in first-time freshman and transfer student classes, which sets K-State on a path to continued growth."

Especially promising is a freshman class that grew by 9%, or 3,193 freshmen across its Manhattan, Salina, Olathe and Global (online) campuses. K-State officials hope that spike marks the beginning of larger classes that come and stay at the university for their entire college careers.

The university has also focused on bolstering its retention rate of students, with 87.1% of last year's freshman returning to the campus.

KU sees largest freshman class in history

The University of Kansas, which has been one of the few universities to have seen positive enrollment growth in recent years, reported it is seeing its largest freshman class in institution history, with 5,259 first-time students enrolling this fall.

That's contributing to an overall enrollment increase of 6.7% at KU's Lawrence and Edwards campuses, and a 3.2% increase at KU Medical Center.

"We are pleased to welcome this historic freshman class and to have grown enrollment to the highest level in years,” Chancellor Douglas Girod said in a statement. “These numbers demonstrate that talented students from across the state and nation see the benefit of attending a top research institution like KU to prepare for their lives and careers. Additionally, these numbers speak to the hard work our faculty and staff do to recruit talented students and then support them so they can succeed here and earn their degrees.”

Minority students are also 25.7% of the university's enrollment, which is the highest percentage on record.

Kansas' regional universities see mixed enrollment figures

At Washburn, the university saw its first enrollment increase in a decade, increasing its full-time equivalent enrollment by 6.1% to 4,318. That increase was buoyed by a record incoming freshman class of 942 students, or a 20% increase in first-time, first-year students compared to fall 2022.

Washburn president JuliAnn Mazachek said those increases are a result of several initiatives the university put in place to increase its support for students, including through new programs like the Shawnee County Promise, which the university announced in May.

That program guarantees that most low to moderate income students from Shawnee County receive scholarships to cover the cost of Washburn tuition, if any balance is left after other scholarships and grants are applied.

"Future economic prosperity in Topeka, our region and state depend upon Washburn growing our qualified workforce, so our recruiting and retention efforts are mission critical," Mazachek said in a statement. "We believe this initiative is working and is the best investment we can make in the future."

Meanwhile, Emporia State University continued to see a big enrollment slump, dropping its headcount by 666 students, or — 12.5%, to 4,658.

ESU president Ken Hush, who has led controversial decisions to axe various academic programs he and other university leaders say have low demand, said the university has long known enrollment will continue to decline, he wrote an open letter to the university community earlier this week.

He asked for patience as Emporia State is "building something different" to meet the needs of modern college students.

"Over the past year, we have worked together on campus to identify how ESU could better serve our students and also benefit the state of Kansas," Hush wrote. "Then we made investments in upgrading our academic programs. We made substantial changes to our academic structure, suspended certain programs and introduced new ones to better serve the needs of our students and our region. We are in the middle of a full-scale transformation, and change of this magnitude takes time."

Comparatively, Fort Hays State and Pittsburg State both saw modest enrollment decreases. Fort Hays State declined by 0.8% to 12,843, while Pittsburg State dropped 2.2% to 5,732.

Technical college enrollment is booming in Kansas

Comparatively, the state's community and technical colleges have seen an increase in enrollment.

The state's 19 community colleges grew by 1.1% to a collective headcount of 60,750. The community colleges, though, have yet to recover from the pandemic, with headcount still down more than 20% compared to a decade ago.

Meanwhile, headcount at the state's six technical colleges has surged, both in the last year and over the past decade. This fall's headcount of 10,941 is 8.6% higher than fall 2022 and 70% higher than a decade ago.

The technical college's full-time equivalency, which is a better measure of the number of classes actually taken, still showed similar growth year-over-year but a smaller 27.4% growth over the past 10 years.

Kansas needs to graduate more students with college degrees

The numbers come as Kansas colleges and universities increasingly look outside of Kansas to maintain or grow enrollment numbers.

The rate at which Kansas high school students go to college dropped from 55.2% in 2014 to 43.7% in 2021, the last year for which data is available, according to a Kansas Regents analysis.

The declines have been most significant for Black and Hispanic students, with only about 1 in 3 high school students in those demographics attending college within a year of graduating.

More: Kansas is growing this decade, but the state isn’t ready to meet the demand for degrees

Kansas, as it stands, is producing about 37,000 college graduates each year, according to an analysis by the University of Kansas Institute for Policy and Social Research.

But that's well short of the demand for people with degrees needed by a growth in advanced manufacturing and other industries, labor economist Donna Ginther previously told the Regents. Kansas is expected to be short about 34,000 degrees by the year 2030.

Rafael Garcia is an education reporter for the Topeka Capital-Journal. He can be reached at rgarcia@cjonline.com or by phone at ‪785-289-5325. Follow him on Twitter at @byRafaelGarcia.

This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Kansas college, university enrollment sees growth in fall 2023