Enrollment rises at Oregon State University, falls at University of Oregon

EUGENE – Figures from the Oregon University System show that enrollment at Oregon State University this fall increased by 4 percent while the student count at the University of Oregon declined by 1 percent.

Oregon State now has more than 30,000 students – exactly 30,058, counting the Bend campus and online enrollment – for its biggest student body in school history. The University of Oregon has 24,181 students.

In 2007, each of Oregon’s big research universities had about 20,300 students. Since then, OSU has grown by 48 percent and the University of Oregon by 19 percent.

This year, Oregon State is keeping a waiting list of qualified students so as to avoid crowding on its Corvallis campus and to keep student-faculty ratios in line.

“We’re really looking at ways we can enhance and grow our student population across the state, not necessarily just in Corvallis,” Kate Peterson, OSU’s assistant provost for enrollment management, told the Register-Guard newspaper.

Both universities use predictive analytics software programs to identify the most desirable students and to calculate the amount of scholarship money they will need to pay to induce those students into accepting admission.

Both schools want to elevate the academic caliber of their entering freshman classes by recruiting the best high school students from Oregon and beyond.

This year, Oregon State raised the bar slightly, attracting freshmen with an average high school grade-point average of 3.59, up from 3.57 the previous year. The University of Oregon’s freshman class fell a bit to 3.58, down from 3.7 last year.

Oregon State’s goal is for 50 percent of the freshman class by 2025 to enter with a 3.75 high school GPA, up from 44 percent who did this year.

The University of Oregon’s goal is to retain membership in the elite Association of American Universities, and its public universities have a median combined freshman GPA of 3.74.