Some New Orleans Colleges Predict Bigger Enrollments This Fall

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By KATHERINE MANGAN

After a difficult year for colleges and universities in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, the enrollment outlook for this fall is a lot brighter.

Tulane University reported last week that 1,375 high-school seniors had committed to attending, a 56-percent jump over last year's 882 new freshmen.

Xavier University of Louisiana reported that it had received 2,874 applications as of the first week of May, more than twice as many as this time last year. The number of accepted applicants who had put down deposits by that date was also about twice as high as last year, and Xavier was projecting an enrollment of 650 for the fall of 2007, compared with 447 last fall.

Loyola University New Orleans had received deposits from 500 incoming freshmen as of early last week, up 18 percent over this time last year, but 47 percent below the pre-Katrina level.

The University of New Orleans reported that as of May 1, applications were up about 7 percent, to 1,827. The university expects to enroll 1,300 freshmen in the fall, compared with 1,021 in the fall of 2006.

Aggressive Recruiting

Dillard University, whose freshman applications are up about 30 percent, hopes to enroll 375 freshmen this fall, compared with 184 last fall and 150 the year before. The university has aggressive new outreach efforts and has the advantage this year of being back on its campus after a semester of being closed and a semester in a downtown hotel.

"We still have a long way to go," said Walter L. Strong, Dillard's executive vice president, "but we're pleased about the progress we're making."

The numbers are still being counted at other colleges and universities in New Orleans, where the population of 255,000 is still just over half what it was before the August 2005 hurricane struck, flooding parts of the city and forcing colleges to close for a semester or more. As a result, local institutions have had to recruit aggressively outside the region, and many have significantly expanded their online programs.

Delgado Community College, for instance, received 3,329 applications by early May, up 19 percent over this time last year. Delgado officials expect freshman enrollment to be up slightly this fall, with many students taking advantage of new online courses.

Our Lady of Holy Cross College reported that applications have jumped from 192 to 299, but it expects a slightly smaller freshman enrollment this fall because so many colleges are competing for students and offering generous scholarship packages.

Louisiana's higher-education commissioner, E. Joseph Savoie, said most New Orleans-area colleges were doing significantly better this year but were still expected to be below their pre-Katrina numbers this fall. Speaking of enrollments this spring, he said, "My general sense is that the public institutions in New Orleans are down a fourth to a third over their pre-Katrina levels, but that's an improvement over last year."

Mr. Savoie said the process of rebuilding the state's public institutions had been "agonizingly slow," and that colleges had had a tough challenge recruiting students and faculty members at a time when the national news media were portraying "this image of a destroyed and dysfunctional city."

Signs of Revival

Events like the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, which drew an estimated 375,000 visitors to New Orleans over two weekends in April and May, turned a welcome spotlight on the city's unique character just as thousands of incoming college students were deciding where they would commit.

Jazz bands from local universities performed during the festival, which was held under warm, sunny skies in a city where lush flowers spilled from window boxes and gardens, vendors were hawking po' boys and jambalaya, and young and old marched in colorful attire to the music of brass bands.

Tulane's president, Scott S. Cowen, said in an interview last week that the increases in applications that Tulane and other local universities were seeing for the fall suggested "that people across the country are more confident about sending their sons and daughters to New Orleans."

Tulane officials were relieved by the number of deposits they had received by May 1, the deadline at many colleges for students to commit. In the fall of 2005, when the last class enrolled before Katrina, Tulane had 1,679 entering freshmen — and the this fall only about half that many. As part of its restructuring plan, the university announced that it would permanently become a smaller institution, with a goal of 1,400 new freshmen each year.

"We thought it would take three years to reach that goal, but we nearly achieved it in one," Mr. Cowen said. Tulane officials had expected to enroll 1,200 students this coming fall, 1,300 in 2008, and 1,400 in 2009, he said, adding that this year's jump from 882 to 1,375 was "the largest one-year increase in first-time freshmen in the history of Tulane."

The increase included significant gains in the percentage of female students and students from the Northeast, he said, adding that many of those who had put down deposits said they were looking forward to helping with the city's recovery effort.

Tulane's incoming freshman class is 55 percent female, with 237 students from Louisiana and 192 from the Northeast. Admissions counselors from Tulane traveled to more than 800 high schools to recruit next fall's entering class. Tulane also expects 128 transfer students, which is more than the number of transfers in 2005 and 2006 combined.

Xavier, too, has aggressively marketed itself to prospective students to show that "whatever recovery challenges the New Orleans area may still face, Xavier's campus has been repaired and reopened since January 2006 to continue our higher-education mission," said Warren A. Bell, a spokesman for the Roman Catholic institution.

Slower Pace Elsewhere

Officials of Southern University at New Orleans said they could not release figures on the number of applications they had received or expected enrollment. The university, which was under 10 to 12 feet of water for weeks and was among the most severely damaged by Katrina, is still operating out of a trailer campus, since its flooded buildings have not been gutted or repaired (The Chronicle, May 26, 2006).

The state's higher-education commissioner, Mr. Savoie, said he understood the stress that was causing for faculty members and students. "I'm just not sure how long you can live in a trailer, go across the parking lot to a class in a trailer, and come back home to a trailer in a neighborhood that's still devastated," he said. "Just the emotional drain of that has to take its toll."

Victor Ukpolo, chancellor of the New Orleans campus and a former vice president of the Southern University system, said it had been hard to recruit students or faculty members to a campus where air-conditioners are only now starting to remove the polluted air from waterlogged buildings so repairs can begin.

"Everyone has been living and working and learning in trailers 24/7 for the past 16 months," he said.

Mr. Ukpolo said he had finally gotten a commitment from state officials to start making repairs soon. He hoped to have the library repaired by this fall and to reopen it as a multipurpose building that will contain classrooms, faculty offices, and exercise facilities. A cafeteria is in the works as well.

"We wanted to have a small success story to increase our morale," the chancellor said.