Official enrollment statistics won’t be released until later this fall, but the University of Georgia will likely set new enrollment records.
UGA fall semester classes began Aug. 13 with a freshman class of more than 6,200, out of a stunning applicant pool of more than 48,000 (not all those who apply are accepted, and not all those accepted enroll), along with more than 2,050 new transfer students, according to a university press release. This is the fourth consecutive year of 6,000-plus first-year students; the record is 6,273 in 2022.
UGA’s growth plan calls for gradually bigger first-year classes, but dramatically larger transfer classes. The fall 2015 first-year class at UGA numbered 5,274, according to University System of Georgia reports; the system recorded 1,574 transfer students at UGA that year. In fall 2024, UGA enrolled 6,169 first-year fall-semester students—about 62% of them female—and 2,026 transfer students, about 55% of them male. UGA accepts a much higher proportion of transfer admission applications than applications from high school students, and about 75% of them do transfer.
UGA’s average annual fall semester growth over the past five years is 845 per year, but that trend may be accelerating. UGA’s enrollment grew by 1,008 students in 2023 and 1,531 students last fall, reaching 43,146—about 77% of them Georgia residents and 59% women.
What they’re studying has also changed remarkably. The Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, which includes the humanities, is still the largest college with 12,075 students as of 2024, according to the annual UGA Fact Book. But that’s down sharply from 2010 (15,501) and even more from 2007 (16,244).
As arts and sciences declined, business school enrollment more than tripled from 3,182 in 2010 to 10,485 in 2024. Another big gainer has been the relatively new College of Engineering, which has grown from 1,310 in 2014, two years after its founding, to 3,000 last year. It is now UGA’s fourth-largest school, and poised for even more growth this year. The College of Veterinary Medicine has also tripled in size in 15 years, from 561 students in 2010 to 1,835 in 2024.
It’s been a different story for UGA’s third-largest college, the Mary Frances Early College of Education. Like many teacher education programs across the country, its enrollment has fallen sharply, from 4,831 in 2010 to 3,798 in 2024.
One enrollment number to keep an eye on: international students. UGA enrolled 2,557 students from other countries last fall, about 6% of total enrollment. Some experts have predicted lucrative international college enrollment will decline nationwide because of President Trump’s anti-immigration efforts, but others don’t expect to see that. A decline could be a much bigger issue for Georgia Tech, which enrolled more international students than Georgia residents last fall—15,800, about 30% of Tech’s 53,363 students, according to university system reports.
Construction Underway
Hundreds of millions of dollars in construction projects are underway on the UGA campus to accommodate the surging student numbers.
Two of the most visible are rising near Lumpkin Street, both scheduled for fall 2026 completion. Near the bottom of Baxter Hill, construction is well underway on a $62 million “dining, learning and wellness center” of 68,000 square feet, with “treetop views over Legion Pool,” according to a UGA press release. Further uphill, a $74 million residence hall will accommodate about 565 first-year students in a 125,000 square-foot building near the intersection of Lumpkin and Wray streets when it’s completed in time for the 2026-27 academic year.
Next to that, near the corner of Broad Street, a big hole in the ground marks the beginning of another big project, but that’s not the university’s. UGA swapped land it owned there for the Baptist College Ministries-owned student center on Lumpkin and Baldwin streets. By 2027, that hole in the ground is set to become a mixed-use development with space for student apartments, a new Baptist student center, a parking deck and other features. A Terry College of Business expansion is slated for the former BCM site.
Another big project is underway on the UGA Health Sciences Campus in Normaltown. It’s a $100 million building for UGA’s new medical school, which is scheduled to double its class size from the current 60 to 120 students in 2026. The USG Board of Regents has also approved UGA’s plan to establish a nursing school in the near future.
Another big project is less visible—an ongoing renovation of UGA’s midcentury science buildings on South Campus.
And one more huge project is set to begin in 2027—a $116 million modernization of Creswell Hall, which houses about 1,000 students. UGA has already completed two other renovations at Brumby Hall and Russell Hall, the other two Baxter Street high-rise dorms built in the 1960s.
Discrimination Policy
As reported first by student newspaper The Red & Black and then by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The Chronicle of Higher Education, UGA has removed “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” from its nondiscrimination policy, ostensibly to conform to Board of Regents policy, though some other Georgia public universities have not taken that step. How that plays out remains to be seen.
Another source of turmoil might be a new Board of Regents mandate that course syllabi must be available for public viewing for all courses by next fall. That could lead to faculty members being targeted or becoming reluctant to teach politically charged material, according to the American Association of University Professors and other critics.
Like what you just read? Support Flagpole by making a donation today. Every dollar you give helps fund our ongoing mission to provide Athens with quality, independent journalism.
