Another year of record enrollment as 2013 see’s UWT’s largest freshman class

Since the University of Washington Tacoma was founded in 1990, enrollment has steadily risen every year. When the campus began admitting freshmen in 2006, enrollment began climbing at a higher increment, with this fall including the largest freshmen class in the university’s history.

Since 2006, about 300 new students have been admitted to UWT every year, with the exception of a smaller class size of less than 200 in the 2009-10 school year, according to the UW Office of Budgeting and Planning’s Total Student Headcount Enrollment documents.

Graduate student numbers have been rising as well, with more than 500 students every year since 2008 and 570 last year. Early numbers suggest similar attendance this year.

According to UW’s website, 2013-14 enrollment for UWT is over 4,000.  This year’s enrollment of 450 freshmen makes it the largest since UWT began accepting freshmen eight years ago.

The Tacoma News Tribune reported that the increased enrollment could be due to the rising amount of Tacoma Public School students applying. This stems from the Pathways to Promise program, which is a partnership between local school districts and UWT structured to spread knowledge to high schools about local colleges. The Tribune also mentioned that over 100 applications came from Tacoma public schools in 2012-13, and UWT hopes to double the amount this year.