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How
many students?
Record
numbers
Down the Corridor
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Students,
faculty and staff noticed more people on campus than ever before
this fall. UNT’s record-high enrollment of 30,183 students
reflects an 8.35 percent increase from last year, or an additional
2,325 students — substantial growth considering that the increase
over the previous 12 years was about 700 students.
Today’s 30,000-plus figure is quite a number compared to the
few hundred students enrolled in the 1890s or the few thousand who
attended in the 1930s and ’40s (the 5,000 mark was first topped
in 1948). In the university’s more recent history, enrollment
has increased particularly in the 1960s and 1980s.
In 1961 when North Texas State College became a university, about
8,800 students were enrolled. By the end of the decade that number
had nearly doubled, to about 15,000. Virginia Wheeless, UNT associate
vice president for planning and UNT System vice chancellor for planning,
says Vietnam veterans returning home from the war may have been
a factor in the significant growth.
“People were coming to school for different reasons,”
she says. “By the end of the 1960s, they were returning to
a normal life.”
The growth
caused a few challenges on campus, especially as thousands trekked
to registration each semester. “Serpentine lines of sun-beaten
students weaved into the Main Library,” wrote an author for
the 1966 Yucca. “Registrants sampled a new procedure
… but the change did little to lessen the traditionally mad
press for classes.”
The enrollment growth during the tie-dyed 1970s was much smaller.
In fact, enrollment increased from 15,000 to only about 17,000 students
by the end of the decade. The 1980s, however, brought another large
growth spurt.
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Enrollment this fall reached a record 30,183 students, an 8.35
percent increase from last year.
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Enrollment
soared from about 17,000 to more than 26,000 students. Wheeless
says this growth could be related to a population increase in the
North Texas area during the ’80s and to the Texas economy
— as the economy declined, college enrollment increased.
Now, with
more than 30,000 students, UNT seems poised to reach its projected
enrollment of 42,000 in 2015, Wheeless says, assuming the state
provides the necessary new resources. So, while registration lines
may be a thing of the past (current students register via the Internet
or phone), other signs of growth on campus are expected far into
the future.
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