Although MU enrollment has remained consistent for the past four years despite nationwide drops, there have been overall declines throughout the past 10 years.

Every year, MU Institutional Research releases data on MU enrollment. The Maneater analyzed data from the last 11 years, including fall 2022 data, provided early by the MU News Bureau.

From 2012 to 2022, total on campus enrollment declined an average of 2% every year. 

“The decline since 2012 is due to coverage of the events of 2015 and the COVID-19 pandemic,” Stephanie Fleming, assistant director of the MU News Bureau, said.

In 2015, a series of protests related to race and leadership, including a boycott by the football team, led to the resignation of former UM System President Tim Wolfe. 

On-campus undergraduate enrollment from 2012 to 2015 averaged about 27,000 students. In 2016, enrollment dropped to about 25,500 students, and by 2017, enrollment dropped to approximately 23,000. The average on campus enrollment from 2018 to 2022 was 22,500 students.

Over the past 11 years, on- campus undergraduate enrollment peaked in the fall semester of 2015, with 27,411 students enrolled. Within these 11 years, enrollment declined across all undergraduate, masters, education specialist and doctoral students. From 2015 to 2016, enrollment declined 7%. In 2017, enrollment also declined 8% from 2016. On-campus masters enrollment declined 54% from 2012 to 2022, the most significant decline between those two periods.

MU faced another issue during this period: the COVID-19 pandemic. But despite nationwide drops in college enrollment from the pandemic, total undergraduate enrollment at MU enrollment has increased since 2018.

The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center published a report in late October analyzing nation-wide enrollment numbers after 2020. Researchers attribute the drop in numbers to the pandemic, which led to universities and colleges across the country going virtual.

According to Institutional Research, total on-campus undergraduate enrollment at MU was 22,000 in the fall of 2019. In the fall of 2020, on-campus undergraduate enrollment increased to 22,555 despite the pandemic. Fall 2022 figures show on campus undergraduate enrollment at 22,754 students.

Across the U.S., there has been a 4.2% decline in undergraduate enrollment since 2020, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center report. But at MU, undergraduate enrollment has increased about 0.88% from 2020 to 2022.

For more information on enrollment, you can find the data used for this story at: https://irqi.missouri.edu/mu-data/student-enrollment/

Edited by Emma Flannery | eflannery@themaneater.com

Copy edited Sterling Sewell and Emily Rutledge