For the second straight year, fewer students are enrolled at Kansas State than the previous year.
According to Monday’s 20th-day enrollment statistics from the Office of the Registrar’s website, 23,779 students are enrolled at the university.
More students are enrolled in the colleges of Agriculture, Business Administration, Engineering and the Graduate School. Fewer students are enrolled in the colleges of Architecture, Arts and Sciences, Education, Human Ecology, Technology and Aviation and Veterinary Medicine.
Last fall, there were 24,146 students. The 367 fewer students equates to a 1.5 percent drop in enrollment. From the fall of 2014 to the fall of 2015, the drop was 620 students, or 2.5 percent.
Fall 2014 was the last time the university saw a growth in enrollment between fall semesters, from 24,581 in 2013 to 24,766 in 2014.
The enrollment statistics showed a similar drop in the total number of credit hours taken by students.
Students in Fall 2013 took 302,685 total credit hours, which grew to 304,153 in Fall 2014, an increase of 0.5 percent.
That number fell to 297,981 in Fall 2015 and 294,246 in Fall 2016, drops of 2 percent and 1.3 percent, respectively.
Last year, budget cuts were made in part due to the decline in enrollment numbers translating into a drop in tuition revenue to the university. The $230.4 million of revenue from student tuition last year accounted for 28.2 percent of the $818.4 million budget.
Cindy Bontrager, vice president for administration and finance, said she and other university administrators cannot comment on the enrollment statistics until Sept. 26 when the Board of Regents will officially release the statistics for all Regents universities.
