UTSA sees fall enrollment holding strong, growth in student success

OCTOBER 19, 2022 — Enrollment at The University of Texas at San Antonio is holding strong with more than 34,300 students taking classes at the university this fall, according to preliminary data from the Office of Institutional Research and Analysis.

Overall, enrollment is up 5% from pre-pandemic figures, when 32,594 students were enrolled in fall 2019. First-time freshman enrollment also increased 1.8% to a record 5,600, as more college-bound students choose UTSA to pursue their bold futures.

“UTSA has been successful in maintaining our enrollment gains during the pandemic thanks to strategic planning and a deliberate focus on increasing financial aid,” said Kimberly Andrews Espy, UTSA provost and senior vice president of academic affairs. 

Of particular note is a 41% surge in online enrollment from fall 2021. The university now has nearly 790 students enrolled in seven fully online degree and certificate programs. Eighty-five percent of online students are undergraduates. 

Other highlights: 

• Seventy percent of students are from racial/ethnic groups underrepresented in higher education. Fifty-nine percent of UTSA students are Hispanic.
  
  
• The UTSA Carlos Alvarez College of Business (ACOB) is now UTSA’s largest academic college with 7,574 students, or 22% of all students. The ACOB surpassed the College for Health, Community and Policy (HCAP), now the university’s second-largest college, with 6,422 students, reflecting 19% of overall enrollment. The College of Sciences (COS) remains UTSA’s third-largest college, with 5,828 students or 17% of all students.
  
  
• Exactly half of UTSA students hail from Bexar County; another 45% come from other Texas counties.

More than 1,170 students are entering UTSA as part of the university’s Bold Promise Program, the largest cohort to date. Raising the Bold Promise family income eligibility threshold to $70,000, made possible by UT System’s Promise Plus endowment, enabled more students to enroll through the Bold Promise Program. Additionally, UTSA is injecting an additional $2 million per year into financial aid from an endowment created from a $40 million gift to the university by philanthropist MacKenzie Scott.

Nearly 77% of new Bold Promise students are Hispanic, and 39.8% are from Bexar County, reflecting the university’s commitment as an urban serving institution that provides high-quality, affordable education to students from the greater San Antonio community. 

More Bold Promise students are taking advantage of all UTSA has to offer by living on campus, as well. More than 46% of new Bold Promise students are living in on-campus housing, up from 22% in fall 2020. The increase is due in part to the university’s new Bold Scholar program, a comprehensive on-campus living-learning experience that is providing housing scholarships to 220 students.

The university’s transfer student enrollment is 2,900 this fall, down from fall 2021 and consistent with declines in transfer student enrollment across the country following the COVID-19 pandemic.

In addition to these enrollment figures, UTSA posted notable progress in several key student success metrics. 

• First-year retention from fall 2021 to fall 2022 is 80%, a nationally recognized benchmark.
  
  
• The university awarded 7,320 undergraduate and graduate degrees in 2021-2022. Sixty-six percent of bachelor’s degrees were awarded to students who identify as an underrepresented minority; 58% were awarded to Hispanic students.

In the last five years, degrees awarded has grown by 16% overall. Five-year growth in undergraduate degrees is 18%, from 4,938 in 2017-2018 to 5,834 in 2021-2022. Graduate degree production grew by 9% in the same time period, from 1,369 to 1,486.

— Rebecca Luther