There are about 10,800 students at the University of Wyoming this fall. That's 100 less than last year and about 1,600 less than 2018, when enrollment started to decline.
The student headcount has fallen 13 percent in the last five years. But Kyle Moore, UW's vice provost for enrollment management, said those figures might be stabilizing.
"What you'll notice is our enrollment is what I would generally classify as relatively steady," he told the UW Board of Trustees last week. "The difference in overall enrollment from last year to this year — we are down a total of 100 students, so less than 1 percent."
Last November, UW trustees approved an emergency $1.5 million recruitment campaign. That campaign was mostly digital and leaned into "retargeting" — directing ads to those who had clicked on a UW ad previously. Recruiters also put out new merch, mailers and other print materials while also advertising on billboards, at Denver International Airport ad spots and even on ski lifts.
Initially, it appeared to be working. Recruiters got more students interested, applied and admitted to the university. But in the end, those additional applicants did not enroll.
The results UW was hoping for "didn't materialize," Chad Baldwin, the university's marketing chief, told the board.
"Something weird happened this year in that everything was tracking so well and then — boom," Baldwin said. "For example, I'm told that we had 63 students who paid their housing deposit, were all lined up to be here this fall and they didn't come. When you've paid $550 or whatever it is and you don't show up, something weird happened."
University recruiters said they are looking into why those admitted students failed to enroll. They're expected to share findings with the board in November.
College enrollment across the United States is falling, a trend driven by the declining birth rate, fewer international students and a strong economy drawing young people into the workforce.
At UW, the number of first-time students and transfer students are both down from 2023 — though the university did see a slight increase in graduate students.
Around 2019, UW shifted its recruiting efforts away from out-of-state students to instead target transfer and other in-state students more aggressively. This meant that UW got pricier for students coming from outside Wyoming's borders.
"There was an intentional change to the aid structure and the pricing for non-resident students," Moore reminded the trustees last week. "What we projected at that time is that we would see a decrease in the total number of non-resident students … What we do know is that even though our total number of non-resident [full-time equivalents] is down, our total revenue associated with non-resident students is up."
However, Moore added, the decline in out-of-state enrollments has been steeper than expected.
