New buildings, programs and expanded financial aid offerings have more students pursuing higher education across San Antonio, despite the botched rollout of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid depressing the number of students filling out the form.
While that hiccup initially sparked fears of enrollment collapse, Texas A&M University-San Antonio saw a 5.6% increase in enrollment this fall, UTSA saw a 3% increase and the Alamo Colleges District saw a 13.7% increase.
So-called “promise” programs at the three institutions, which provide tuition and fee-free college for eligible students, helped drive that growth, with more students enrolling and attending that might not have otherwise been able.
That includes 6,700 students attending one of the five colleges in the Alamo Colleges District, which recently expanded the AlamoPromise program to include any graduating high school senior in Bexar County.
All in all, the district reported a record fall enrollment of 77,191 at the end of August.
The growth and success of the program signal a brighter future for the region, according to District Chancellor Mike Flores, who said the record-breaking enrollment “reflects our community’s confidence in the transformative power of education and our shared commitment to our moonshot of partnering to end poverty through education and training.”
UTSA Bold Promise, which partners with Alamo Colleges in a “promise-to-promise” program, also added over 1,100 students this year, bringing the total number of participants to 2,900.
Other enrollment increases, like an 8% jump in the number of students enrolled in PH.D. programs and a 4% increase in new, first-time student enrollment, contribute to the 35,900 student enrollment figure, the largest class in the university’s history.
Without a botched FAFSA process, the University of Texas at San Antonio would likely have enrolled even more students, according to Lynn Barnes, UTSA’s senior vice provost for strategic enrollment.
“We believe that our enrollment would have been higher if it wasn’t for those particular issues with the FAFSA,” he said. “We had been working, and continue to work with students who had trouble with that process and ended up needing extra time, or simply had a bad experience with the process and getting through it.”
FAFSA, the benchmark used by higher education institutions to measure student need, asks questions about parental income, bank accounts, investments and more to determine what grants and loans students are eligible to receive.
UTSA was among the first in the state to release student aid and provided more financial aid than any time in the past, according to Barnes, who said the feat was “a testament to our team working through a pretty horrific experience on the data side and system side, because it was just full of problems for a very extended period of time.”
To counteract the issues related to the FAFSA, UTSA extended its priority deadline to May 1 “and … conducted concentrated outreach campaigns to encourage students to complete their FAFSA,” including campus workshops and virtual workshops.
Barnes attributes the growth that did occur to hard work, visibility and the university’s achievements, such as reaching R1 status, an elite designation for research activity, and adding new programs in recent years.
TAMUSA — which grew from 7,603 students last year to 8,036 students this year — saw about 650 students benefit from tuition-free classes through its new Jaguar Promise program. The university is also partnering with Alamo Colleges in a “promise-to-promise” arrangement.
To keep up with growth, the university is adding new buildings for academics and student life including Estrella Hall, the university’s second residence hall, which can accommodate about 350 students, a new student recreation center and a new public health and education building set to open this spring.
TAMUSA President Salvador Hector Ochoa said in a statement that the record-breaking numbers “highlight the university’s … commitment to providing our students with high-quality education and support services.”
While the enrollment figures weren’t immediately available for all local universities, St. Mary’s University confirmed an increase of 2.6% and Trinity University, which caps admittance, reported a record number of applications.
The University of the Incarnate Word, which has campuses in San Antonio and Mexico, had its second highest first-time-in-college enrollment since 2011 and slightly higher enrollment overall than last year. UIW campuses in Mexico saw a surge of enrollment of 14%, according to numbers shared Wednesday.
UT Health declined to provide enrollment numbers when asked, but said in a statement that the school “has experienced planned measured growth in public health and health profession programs.”
UT Health and UTSA are slated to merge in the coming years.
Our Lady of the Lake University was unable to share enrollment figures by press time.
