University of Arizona’s school population is shrinking, but it’s on purpose

The University of Arizona is getting smaller — and school officials say that’s on purpose. The first-year class starting in the fall of 2025 was about 20% smaller than the prior year. UA has also reduced the amount of tuition discounts it gave out for out-of-state students.

Kate Hidalgo Bellows has written about this; she’s a staff reporter at the Chronicle of Higher Education and she joined The Show to talk about what she found.

Full conversation

MARK BRODIE: Kate, good morning.

KATE HIDALGO BELLOWS: Good morning.

BRODIE: So, how much smaller is UA getting here?

BELLOWS: Well, it’s important to keep in mind that it was just for this past class. So if you were to look at the university as a whole, you probably wouldn’t notice a difference because even though the first-year class got smaller, the other classes wouldn’t have beyond a normal amount. But for a first-year class to get 20% smaller is pretty significant, especially in these days where flagship universities — so large state universities — are generally doing very well.

BRODIE: And when you asked a number of administrators and officials at the university, they said, “Yeah, we’re trying to do this.”

BELLOWS: Yes, that surprised me. So they said that it was to try to take in a more prepared class, a class that would graduate and retain at higher rates. In my reporting, we found that Arizona students graduate at lower rates than other peers of the institution, so other mostly state institutions in the Midwest or Southwest.

And that was kind of surprising to see that, but it was also to help cut costs because, as I’m sure your listeners know, the University of Arizona used to be in a $177 million budget hole. So Arizona was giving a lot of merit aid to out-of-state students. Less merit aid, less appealing offer. And so they saw the results of that.

BRODIE: So, I mean, I think it probably bears asking if, you know, maybe the university is trying to reduce some of the costs. But are they really trying to have fewer first-year students? Like, is this something they’re actually intentionally doing, or is it maybe related to other factors?

BELLOWS: Right, and that’s something that I looked into and was a big question of mine in my reporting. I’m based in D.C., but I went out to Tucson and talked to people there. And it seems like there’s a number of factors, and it wasn’t all intentional.

So keep in mind also that there’s a demographic cliff, so fewer high school students graduating and going on to college. Colleges are dealing with reduced faith in higher education. The university had also cut some admissions recruiters to try to reduce costs, like many universities have had layoffs. And so that meant that students might not have been finding out about the university — out-of-state students.

But I think the bigger thing, and the thing that I think is so unique here, is that the university felt like they were taking in students that weren’t succeeding and they were putting them in debt that they couldn’t get out of. And so when I spoke to people there, they were very concerned about that problem. And so the students that they are trying to take in have better credentials and better test scores.

BRODIE: Does that make the university maybe a little more selective in its admissions process?

BELLOWS: That seems to be the goal. So more recently than those changes — the 20% reduction — the university has made some updates to its admissions process that are kind of in line with what some more elite universities do. So, for example, adding an early action deadline where you apply earlier, you find out earlier, you might commit earlier.

They’ve also made holistic admissions — where you’re considering grades, academics, extracurriculars, essays, other factors — the one lane for getting in. So it used to be that if you had like certain grades, you would automatically get in, but they have done away with that and now it’s just holistic admissions.

BRODIE: Is this something that university officials want or plan to continue? Like, do they expect that, you know, for the next X number of years, the freshman class will continue to be smaller than it has been in the past?

BELLOWS: Yeah. So actually, when we talk about the university getting smaller, this is about the size that it was before the pandemic. And since then, like other flagships, it had just kind of ballooned up to about 9,300 students. Sorry, I don’t have the number right in front of me, but — and so when I’ve spoken to the president and the provost, they’ve said that they’re kind of returning to that smaller size and they will not be going back to, you know, 9,000-plus students, which, you know, it should also be said, puts a lot of strain on university resources like housing and dining and stuff like that.

BRODIE: Yeah, I’m curious about the faculty because some of them, based on your reporting, were, you know, they weren’t necessarily complaining about having smaller class sizes, but maybe there are some aspects of it that concern them?

BELLOWS: That’s correct, Mark. So, you know, one of the other interesting things about the University of Arizona is it’s a lot more diverse and has a higher percentage of Pell-eligible students than a lot of other flagship universities. So, you know, the university enrolls a lot of Hispanic and Latino students, Native students.

And I think the concern from the faculty members was really about what the university’s becoming and who it serves. And some are worried that the university is trying to position itself as a more elite institution than it actually is. That’s what they say. And there’s concerns that that will — that in that mission, it will become more white, less diverse, taking in richer students, since, you know, there’s a correlation between test scores and wealth. So that’s the concern that I hear from faculty.

BRODIE: Sure. Have you seen this or have folks at UA said that, you know, they modeled this on any other university? Like, is anybody else doing this?

BELLOWS: I haven’t seen this particular strategy elsewhere. I mean, containing class sizes is not uncommon. There’s many reasons that a university might want to do that, including the resources that I mentioned, putting the strain on that.

But it’s kind of goes against what you would normally think a university would want to do, especially when you consider the fact that the university told me that when it cut tuition discounting for out-of-state students, and was taking in fewer out-of-state students, that didn’t have that much of an effect on how much money it was bringing in. And actually, taking in fewer students meant that it had about the same amount of money because of how much discounting there was going on. So I just think this whole strategy is pretty unique. But some of the admissions changes we see that pretty often.

BRODIE: Interesting. All right. That is Kate Hidalgo Bellows, a staff reporter at The Chronicle of Higher Education. Kate, thanks so much.

BELLOWS: Thank you so much.