First day of Fall Semester

UVSC's Fall Semester started Wednesday, and despite booming enrollment it looks like the kinks that have plagued the back-to-campus rush have been ironed out. Lines seemed shorter and no major outages for the school's UVLink computer system. All in all a good beginning to the last year as UVSC.

UVSC's final fall semester begins (Daily Herald, August 23 2007)

But the big story here just might be enrollment. Right now the school is running a nearly 7 percent increase compared to the numbers posted at this time last year. Of course the final fall numbers won't be posted for another 3 weeks, so look for that big percentage to drop each day until then. The Pipeline spoke with an administrator on Wednesday who said they are predicting about a 2 percent increase when all is said and done. Compared to most other schools in the state this year that is huge.

The total head count numbers will be helped considerably when the high schools start turning in their concurrent enrollment data at the beginning of September. Concurrent enrollment might he

The other impressive number this year is the Full Time Equivalent, which as of today sits at 15,448. As we all know the FTE calculates the number of students that are taking a full load, and it is the number that actually means something (the one used by the state to calculate funding). In fact the FTE for this year is already 98.6 percent of Fall '05 numbers, with just 93.4 percent of the headcount. That means students are taking more credits. More FTE means more funding, and hopefully more eventual graduates.

In fact, according to the most recent fact book put out by UVSC's Institutional Research office, the number of juniors and seniors has steadily risen over the past 5 years. Thats a sure sign that students are staying put, which might be the reason why headcount and FTE numbers are on the rise.