Purdue tops 55,000 students, up 5.6% on WL campus

A record freshman class, bigger than Purdue initially planned, contributes another enrollment record. Plus, Purdue says stalled ‘neighborhood hospital’ plans still in the works.

• Today’s edition is sponsored by the Tippecanoe County Historical Association, presenting the 57th annual Feast of the Hunters' Moon, Oct. 5-6 at Historic Fort Ouiatenon. Immerse yourself in 18^th century life along the Wabash River, with delicious food, live music, educational demonstrations and fun activities for all ages. Tickets are on sale now at feastofthehuntersmoon.org or at various outlets throughout the community.

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PURDUE EXTENDS RECORD ENROLLMENT STREAK TO A DECADE, STARTS TALKING ABOUT TRIMMING BACK

Purdue notched the second largest bump in enrollment in a decade to start to fall 2024 semester, bringing a record freshman class and an overall student body that is 5.6% more than the then-record enrollment a year earlier, according to West Lafayette campus census figures released Monday.

Enrollment for the West Lafayette campus sits at 55,119, according to Purdue’s figures.

That made for the third time Purdue’s enrollment has been over 50,000, including 52,211 during the fall 2023 semester. (Numbers both years include online undergraduate and graduate/professional students. With online students peeled back, Purdue reported 50,408 on the West Lafayette campus.)

(Photo: Dave Bangert)

The increase of 2,908 students continued a run of year-over-year enrollment records on the West Lafayette campus that stretches to 2014.

Since 2020, Purdue’s enrollment is up 20%, with 9,250 more students in four years.

During its consecutive run of record enrollments, Purdue’s student count on the West Lafayette campus is up 42% – or 16,349 students since fall 2014.

The numbers confirmed a series of warnings from Purdue’s administration this summer that the incoming freshman class overshot all expectations, sending the university scrambling to fulfill campus housing demand and offering incentives for undergrads to accept room assignments up to four miles from campus.

Purdue’s numbers Monday showed 10,628 freshmen in West Lafayette. That’s the largest incoming class in Purdue’s history, topping the 10,191 freshmen in 2021. (The past four years include Purdue’s largest four freshman classes in the school’s history.)

Over the summer, Purdue President Mung Chiang had said efforts to trim about 300 students from the 9,285 who were on campus in fall 2023 didn’t work. Purdue had a record pool of 78,526 applications, according to the university’s figures. Chiang said the university wound up with an unexpected late-spring surge in students accepting Purdue’s acceptance letters. Purdue’s yield rate of students accepting offers was 29.1%, up from a typical range of 25% to 27%.

Chiang warned then that Purdue was looking at 1,600 more freshmen than planned for, while chalking up the ongoing record demand in part to the university’s ongoing tuition freeze since 2013.

In August, as students started to arrive for the school year, Chiang told reporters that the university needed to “further and significantly reduce admissions rate for the incoming undergraduate class … simply because this city of West Lafayette and this campus is not built for the kind of enrollment that we have today.”

On Monday, during the first meeting of the year for the University Senate, Chiang repeated that, telling faculty leaders that among the efforts this year on campus was “looking at reducing the enrollment here to decongest and de-densify what we have here.”

Combined West Lafayette and Indianapolis campuses: Purdue touts the opening of its Indianapolis campus – after dissolving its relationship with IU at IUPUI – as an extension of the West Lafayette campus. Together, they totaled 58,009. Of that, the Indianapolis campus had 2,834 undergrad and graduate students in residential programs. The Indianapolis campus reported 760 freshmen.

On a related note: This summer, Chiang credited some of the late rally in enrollment to how campuses – alluding in particular to Indiana University – handled demonstrations over the war in Gaza during the spring semester compared to how things played out at Purdue. In a LinkedIn post, Chiang wrote that “high school seniors and their families leaning toward other universities in Indiana and in other states pivoted to accept Purdue's admission instead, based on the different campus conditions they saw.” IU released it student census Friday. According to the Bloomington Herald-Times, IU’s Bloomington campus had a record 48,424 students for the fall 2024 semester, up 897 students or 1.8%.

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PURDUE: ‘NEIGHBORHOOD HOSPITAL’ PLANS MIGHT LOOK DIFFERENT, BUT STILL IN THE WORKS AFTER TWO YEAR LULL

Nearly two years after Ascension St. Vincent and Purdue officials broke ground on plans for what was dubbed a neighborhood hospital in the Discovery Park District, things might be getting back on track soon, university officials said Monday.