Schools

Record 45,000 enroll at USF

School officials say its freshman class is academically stronger than ever.

By SHANNON COLAVECCHIO-VAN SICKLER, Times Staff Writer
Published August 30, 2007

The official fall enrollment count won't be ready until after the drop/add period for classes, but the figures released Wednesday indicate USF is likely to remain the state's third-largest public university behind University of Central Florida (second) and the University of Florida (tops with about 49,000).
	[Times photo: Daniel Wallace]

TAMPA -- Enrollment at all four University of South Florida campuses is up by more than 3 percent this fall to a record 45,000, according to first-day enrollment figures released Wednesday.

Meanwhile, black freshman undergraduate enrollment grew considerably after two years of decline. And the freshman class is academically stronger than ever, administrators noted with pride.

"These are exciting times at USF," President Judy Genshaft said in a statement. "Something the founders of this university dreamed of and worked so hard for is more real than ever."

The average SAT for this year's freshman class is 1,148, up from 1,131 last year. But LeEllen Brigman, vice president for academic affairs, said she is especially pleased that the average high school GPA went from 3.61 to 3.71. And close to 30 percent of freshmen ranked at the top 10 percent of their high school class.

Most of this fall's students -- 38,417 -- are attending classes on the main Tampa campus. But that campus is already so crowded, some students take classes in a nearby movie theater. So Tampa, not surprisingly, grew by less than 3 percent.

The branch campuses are a different story. The Lakeland campus grew by 9.3 percent, to 1,116. The Sarasota campus is up to 1,824 students, 8.4 percent more than last year. And the downtown St. Petersburg campus grew by 4.5 percent, to 3,534.

The official fall enrollment count won't be ready until after the drop/add period for classes. But the figures released Wednesday indicate USF is likely to remain the state's third-largest public university.

The University of Central Florida in Orlando is No. 2 in overall enrollment behind the University of Florida, with nearly 49,000 students.

But UCF last fall had the largest undergraduate class, and is expected to hold that distinction this fall with an undergraduate class of 41,685.

The fall 2007 UCF freshman class' average SAT score is 1217, president John Hitt told legislators during a meeting in Tallahassee this week. The average high school GPA is 3.7.

State universities in Florida are freezing future freshman enrollment to deal with looming budget cutbacks of at least $100-million, but research colleges like USF continue to focus on graduate-level populations.

For USF, the largest percentage of enrollment growth came in graduate and professional programs, which have 9 percent more students than last year.

USF now has 8,721 graduate and professional students - 8 percent of them black and 8 percent of them Hispanic.

In this year's Princeton Review of the "366 Best Colleges," USF was ranked No. 17 for diversity.

But undergraduate diversity at USF this fall is more of a mixed bag, with Hispanic, Asian and American-Indian freshman enrollment falling but black freshman enrollment rising by 16 percent.

USF's overall undergraduate black enrollment is up 3.3 percent from last year, to 4,300 students; and overall Hispanic enrollment went up by more than 10 percent to 4,411.

Most notably, though, freshman black enrollment this fall is at 352 students, or 9 percent of USF's total freshman student population.

That's a 16 percent jump from last fall, when enrollment of black first-time-in students fell by 12 percent.

Brigman said that reflects USF's continued recruiting efforts in high schools with large populations of low-income students, many of them the first in their families to attend college.

Yet Hispanic freshman enrollment this fall, 544 students, represents a 4.6 percent drop from last year.

Brigman said it's not as if USF administrators stopped reaching out to one minority group as it sought others. But there is stiff competition among universities to recruit college-bound minorities.

"Many of them are able to pick and choose from a variety of institutions," she said.

USF's more than 5,000 transfer students did contribute significantly to USF's diversity. Twenty-five percent are black, and nearly 30 percent are Hispanic.

Shannon Colavecchio-Van Sickler can be reached at svansickler@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3403.

[Last modified August 30, 2007, 02:03:44]