A new University of Georgia “strategic enrollment management plan” aims to gently tap the brakes on undergraduate enrollment while growing graduate enrollment. Much of that growth in graduate students would be online, according to the plan, released recently by UGA’s Vice President for Instruction office.
The plan also aims to increase the numbers of students from outside Atlanta, which has increasingly dominated UGA enrollment in the city’s recent decades of explosive growth. In addition, administrators intend to bring more low-income and first-generation students to UGA, largely by increasing transfer student numbers and then giving them more support, such as financial aid, food assistance and work-study opportunities.
What’s not in the plan is anything to do with the university’s dwindling numbers of Black students. According to a 2022 analysis by NBC News, as of 2020 the gap between the percent of Georgia high school graduates who are Black (36%) and the percentage in the freshman class (6%) was greater than any U.S. flagship university except the University of Mississippi. Black enrollment at UGA last fall was 7.5% of all students, the lowest percent since 2008.
The plan set a target of limiting the size of this year’s first-year class to 6,150 students—down from last year’s 6,311 and the record 6,471 in 2022. The first-year class would grow by half a percent each year, reaching 6,250 in 2028–29.
Graduate enrollment would go up by 4% a year, largely by increasing UGA’s modest slate of online graduate study programs. The two areas with the largest potential for growth are social work, which could potentially grow from 130 online graduate students in 2023–24 to 509 in 2028–29, and business administration and management, which could grow from 58 to 449. In all, UGA aims to double online graduate enrollment from 1,033 to 2,085 in five years.
Overall UGA enrollment for this fall is projected to be about 42,400 students—up from 41,615 in fall 2023—and reach 45,000 in fall 2028, an average annual increase of about 1.5%, or about 700 students. That’s about the same as UGA’s annual numerical enrollment growth over the past four years. Last year’s fall enrollment was up 1,008 from the year before.
That enrollment growth will also increase tuition revenue by about 1.5%—enough to hire 115 new tenure track faculty, which will allow UGA to maintain a student-faculty ratio of 17:1, said UGA Vice Provost for Enrollment Management Andy Borst in his introduction to the plan, posted online at the UGA Vice President for Instruction web page (instruction.uga.edu).
While UGA intends to limit freshman class size, the school plans to bump up undergraduate transfer student admissions to reach a ratio of one new transfer student per two first-year admits, including an increase of nearly 12% in the upcoming academic year. UGA admitted 2,851 transfer students in the most recent 2023–24 academic year, according to the statistics presented in the plan; by 2028–29, the number is projected to be about 3,396.
Since the plan calls for maintaining the percentage of in-state students at UGA at about 80%, and about 95% of transfer students are Georgia residents, the numbers of out-of-state and out-of-country first-year students will presumably rise.
Transfer students are more likely to be low-income than first-year admits, and twice as likely to be the first in their families to get a bachelor’s degree, according to the management plan’s narrative.
The plan comes as applications to enter UGA have reached levels unimaginable a few years ago—fueled perhaps by both Bulldog football success in the past few seasons and UGA’s rising academic reputation. Last year, UGA received 43,090 applications, down slightly from the previous year’s 43,700, but more than twice the number a decade earlier. “Our enrollment strategies are crafted to align campus resources with student demand,” Borst wrote.
UGA plans to house a fraction of the new students on campus. A 565-bed residence hall for first-year students is slated to be built by fall 2026, along with a new dining hall and parking deck addition near the high-rise dorms on Baxter Street. But close to 2,000 of the projected 3,437 additional students five years from now will be looking for off-campus housing, and that’s assuming those 1,052 new online graduate students don’t live here.
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