UT’s Rural Enrollment Up, Hispanic Enrollment Edges Down

By Rose Cahalan in Promote & Protect on January 30, 2012 at 3:17 pm | No Comments

How close is UT to creating a student body that looks like the rest of Texas?

A new Office of Admissions report on enrollment diversity shows that progress is happening, but the University still has a long way to go.

President Powers presented the report to the Governor’s Office on Dec. 31.

The good:

• Geographic diversity is up: UT aims to enroll more students from rural Texas, rather than major metropolises, and 2011 showed a whopping 114 percent increase in students enrolling from non-metropolitan areas.
• Admissions outreach is up: This year, UT admissions officers are attending 23 percent more college fairs, making 11 percent more high school visits, and conducting 44 percent more information sessions with prospective students. This year, the Office of Admissions opened its seventh regional admissions center in El Paso.

The bad:

• Hispanic enrollment is down: In Fall 2011, 23.1 percent of new students were Hispanic, versus 25 percent in 2010. UT is still a long way away from reflecting the state of Texas’ 37.6 percent Hispanic population.
• By and large, UT students still come from wealthy families: The largest proportion of enrolled students from Texas, 19 percent, has a household income ranging from $100,000 to $149,000 per year. The next largest proportion, 16 percent, has a household income of more than $200,000 per year. Thirteen percent come from families making between $20,000 and $39,999 per year.
• State funding cuts hurt minority enrollment: The 2011-2012 budgetary session resulted in reduced and delayed funding for financial aid. As a result, UT was slower to make financial aid offers to students and could not offer packages that were as generous as in previous years. “Declines and delays in need-based aid had an exceptional effect on underrepresented students in the 2011 entering class because many depend heavily on financial aid,” the report says.

Read the full report here:
SB_175_Report_for_2011

Tags: admissions, diversity, enrollment, hispanic, numbers, race, report, statistics