NU enrollment sees decrease in graduate, international students

While the overall University of Nebraska system enrollment decreased slightly for this school year, with notable decreases with international and graduate students, the amount of credit hours students are taking went up.

There are 49,638 students across the four NU campuses and the Nebraska College of Technical Agriculture, which is 111 fewer than the 49,749 students at the start of the 2024 school year.

The Kearney campus saw the largest decrease in enrollment at 3.1%.

“Enrollment patterns are tied to shifting demographics, increased competition for students, and a decline in international student enrollment,” Kelly Bartling, UNK vice chancellor for enrollment management, said in a news release.

According to university data, there were 174 fewer international students enrolled this year. At his State of the University address last week, NU President Jeffrey Gold said this was in line with a national trend universities are seeing.

“The loss of international students is the largest number year over year that we have sustained in a very long time,” Gold said. “That is exactly the trend that my Big 10 peers are talking about with us and that we're seeing widely across the country.”

There was also a decrease of 2.4% in graduate students across the system.

Gold attributed the overall enrollment staying the same to increases in first-time freshmen and health profession students.

The University of Nebraska Medical Center saw a 2.4% increase in enrollment, and the Nebraska College of Technical Agriculture saw a 6% increase for a total of 213 students.

“I’m proud, too, of the continued growth in UNMC health profession enrollment, which reflects a steady, more than 25-year trajectory,” Gold said in a news release. “That growth is vital to meeting the health care needs of communities across Nebraska, today and well into the future.”

Students are also taking a total of 606,316 credit hours, compared to 604,488 last year.

“What it means statistically is that we're retaining our student body better and that they're taking larger credit loads towards graduation, which is exactly what we want to see them do,” Gold said following his address last week. “We want to see them accelerate their time to degree, and that actually feeds the economic engine, but it also creates capacity, teaching capacity for us for the next year's incoming class.”