Chris Rios
Associate Dean for Enrollment Management
Enrollment
Last fall we welcomed Michael Young as Dean of the Graduate School. What is the state of graduate education at Baylor at the beginning of his tenure? His article explored our graduation rates for the more than 1900 degrees awarded over the past calendar year. This one will take a closer look at enrollment.
First, it’s near an all-time high. Total post-graduate enrollment is nearly 6000. Nearly 5000 students are in the Graduate School, with the remainder in Truett Seminary, Garland School of Social Work, and the Law School. Of those, nearly half are in online programs.
Is this a large number of students? Not by national standards. If we look at other private, R1 universities who compete in a power-four athletic conference, we see we are within the range, but near the bottom. We’re also near the bottom when it comes to proportion of total university enrollment, graduate and undergraduate. Thus, we are in a healthy place, with considerable room to grow.
Looking within Baylor, we see that most Graduate School students are in five units, each with an enrollment over 600 students. We expect the School of Engineering and Computer Science to join this group in the coming years. We also see that majority of students are at the doctoral levels, both professional and research.
Earlier I noted that we are near an all-time high in graduate enrollment. We have seen considerable growth in recent years and have expected this trend to continue. But no discussion of graduate enrollment today can ignore the headwinds all universities are facing. Recent federal policy changes have brought unprecedented challenges to graduate education. Reductions in federal loans and loan limits, program reclassifications, and rules intended to limit and deter international students are keeping graduate deans up at night. As one example, recent changes in rules for international students have led to a sharp decline in applications nation wide. At Baylor, we have seen a ~40% decrease (equaling ~700 applications) compared to this time last year. International students make up more than 10% of our total student body and a third of PhD students. The Graduate School remains committed to attracting the best students the world has to offer. They are important members of the Baylor family who enrich our campuses and help us fulfill the Pro Mundo mission of our strategic plan. We are similarly committed to meeting each of the challenges we encounter and stay well poised for the years ahead.