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The Universities of Wisconsin system will no longer release enrollment numbers for its individual campuses, The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported. Instead, officials will offer updates on enrollments across the system and at the larger UW institutions, many of which have multiple branch campuses.
The system reported a 0.7 percent enrollment increase this fall across all campuses, including at eight of its 13 institutions. But over the past two years, six of the system’s 13 branch campuses have closed or announced plans to shutter by 2025, all citing steep enrollment declines and diminished tuition revenue.
UW Platteville closed its Richland campus last fall. UW Milwaukee announced in March that it would shutter its Waukesha campus—where enrollment has fallen by 65 percent over the past decade—by the end of the 2025 spring semester; it also shuttered its College of General Studies, laying off dozens of faculty in a move the university said was necessitated by enrollment challenges. UW Oshkosh announced in June that it would shutter its Fox Cities campus by next summer. Three other campuses—UW Milwaukee Washington County, UW Oshkosh Fond du Lac and UW Green Bay Marinette—moved fully online.
In July the Wisconsin State Legislature formed a committee to investigate the core reasons for the Universities of Wisconsin’s enrollment struggles; members will release their recommendations for the system’s future planning and funding by the end of the year.
System president Jay Rothman told the Journal-Sentinel that officials decided to forgo enrollment updates for individual campuses because students were enrolling in classes on multiple campuses at once, making the total university number “the best” to report. Earlier this year, the system rebranded for similar reasons, changing its name from the UW System to the Universities of Wisconsin.
