PASSHE enrollment on the rise
HARRISBURG, PA (WENY) - The Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education announced that fall enrollment of new first-time students has increased for the second consecutive year on Monday, October 9th. This trend was noticed in state-owned universities and showed an increase of 3.4 percent more students in the Fall 2023 semester. Enrollment is up a combined total of 10 percent in Fall 2022 and Fall 2023.
“More freshmen and transfer students are choosing State System universities, and that is a very encouraging trend for the state-owned universities and our efforts to address worker shortages in Pennsylvania,” Dr. Cynthia Shapira, chair of the PASSHE Board of Governors said in a prepared statement, “The State System has frozen tuition and aligned academic programs to in-demand jobs, and two straight years of new-student enrollment growth shows that is what students want. The strategy is working.”
Seven universities under PASSHE have increased their first-time undergraduate degree or certificate-seeking enrollment. These schools include East Stroudsburg (21.1 percent), Cheyney (15.2 percent), Indiana (15 percent), Commonwealth (11.8 percent), Slippery Rock (5.3 percent), West Chester (2.7 percent), and Shippensburg (1.6 percent). The total new first-time undergraduate degree or certificate-seeking student enrollment of those seven universities increased 9 percent.
“We are pleased the strategy to freeze tuition and align more programs to in-demand careers is benefiting students,” said Dan Greenstein, PASSHE Chancellor, in the statement, “We know that Pennsylvania needs State System universities to help address worker shortages in healthcare, STEM, business and education, all of which are among our strongest and most enrolled programs. We are focused on preparing more Pennsylvanians to be both comprehensively educated and specifically skilled for good jobs that our state’s economy depends on.”
Students are becoming more drawn to these schools due to tuition freezes and the coordination of programs to align with in-demand jobs. The PASSHE Board of Governors were able to freeze tuition for an unprecedented fifth year. Now, in-state undergraduate students, 88% of which are Pennsylvania residents, have flat tuition for a sixth consecutive year (2018-2024).
Enrollment is now stabilizing after more than a decade of declines.
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