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Enrollment at Texas Public Colleges and Universities Continues Upward Trend

ByBlake Decker

Most of the blog posts during this spring semester have been focused on the future of higher education enrollment in Texas and the nation. The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) recently published fall 2024 enrollment data, giving us our first glimpse into current statewide and institution-level trends across Texas. Last fall, public institutions of higher education in Texas, including all two-year colleges, universities, and health-related institutions (HRIs), experienced an overall 3.6% increase in fall-to-fall enrollment with almost 1.45 million students enrolled, up from 1.4 million in fall 2023. This 50,000-student gain brought Texas almost back to its peak enrollment of 1.453 million students in fall 2019, as enrollment at two-year colleges exceeded enrollment at public universities and HRIs for the first time since before the pandemic. The remainder of this blog post will unpack enrollment trends across the state as well as by public universities in Texas.

upward trends continue across all institution types in Texas

The chart to the right shows 10-year trend data for two combinations of institutional segments in Texas: public universities plus HRIs, and all 2-year colleges.

  • Universities & HRIs: Public universities and HRIs continue their collective steady climb that has seen a 12% increase in total enrollment from 643K in 2015 to over 718K in 2024. Last fall, the year-over-year growth for these institutions exceeded 2 percentage points for the first time since fall 2017.
  • All 2-year Colleges: After dramatic declines in enrollment from 2019 to 2021, public 2-year colleges have seen three straight years of increases. These institutions saw a 5.2% jump from 696K in 2023 to 732K in 2024. Even taking into account the 104K headcount drop from 2019-2021, 2-year colleges experienced a 1.8% increase from 2015 to 2024.

enrollment trends at public universities

In fall 2024, public universities in Texas saw their highest one-year headcount increase in 7 years, as enrollment grew by more than 13,000 students from 676,467 in fall 2023 to 689,790 in fall 2024. During the past decade, Texas public universities experienced an 11.4% increase in overall enrollment from 619K in 2015 to almost 690K in 2024. The following bullet points include a few observations taken from the three visualizations provided below.

  • Tarleton State University experienced the largest numeric growth of all public universities in Texas in fall 2024. Tarleton’s fall 2024 enrollment increased by 2,743 students, growing from 14,513 students in fall 2023 to 17,256 students in fall 2024. The 19% increase from 2023 to 2024 was second only to Sul Ross State University, which experienced a one-year increase of 29%.
  • Over the past decade, Tarleton has seen a 40% increase in total enrollment, growing by 4,923 students from the 12,333 enrolled in fall 2015. Tarleton’s percentage growth trails only the University of North Texas at Dallas, which had a 52% increase from 2015-2024. (Note: This ranking includes only universities who admitted lower-division students (freshmen and sophomores) in fall 2015).
  • There were 23 public universities in Texas that experienced growth in enrollment from 2023 to 2024. Five of those institutions added more than 1,000 students in fall 2024 when compared to fall 2023: Tarleton (2,743), University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (2,001), Texas State University (1,764), University of Houston (1,269), East Texas A&M University (formerly, Texas A&M University-Commerce) (1,241), and Texas A&M University (1,149).
  • Four public universities in Texas experienced double-digit percentage increases in fall 2024: SRSU (29.2%), Tarleton (18.9%), Texas A&M University-Texarkana (14.8%), and ETAMU (10.8%).
  • Two universities had decreases exceeding 500 students in fall 2024: University of Texas at Dallas (-999) and University of North Texas (-544). The largest percentage decreases were at University of Texas Permian Basin (-6.1%), Midwestern State University (-5.6%), and University of Houston-Victoria (-5.2%).
  • The University of North Texas, which had seen five consecutive years of growth resulting in a 23% increase from 2019 to 2023, experienced its first decline in enrollment in over a decade during the fall 2024 semester.
  • The Texas A&M University System had 7 of the top 10 and 9 of the top 13 universities in terms of percentage growth from fall 2023 to fall 2024. For the 10-year window from 2015 to 2024, the 11 universities in the A&M System experienced a 15% increase in total enrollment from 140,153 in 2015 to 161,179 in 2024. The UNT System (which includes UNT and UNT Dallas) had the highest growth in terms of percentage at 26%, while the Texas Tech University System (13.2%) joined the A&M System and UNT System in exceeding the statewide growth of 11.4%. The UT System (11.3%) trailed the state average for percentage increase while leading in terms of overall enrollment increase of 24,963 from 2015 (220,112) to 2024 (245,075).

So What?

Throughout this series, we have seen where Texas, unlike so many other states in America, has fared well in most of the metrics that signal health in higher education enrollment. The most recent enrollment data from fall 2024 support the fact that Texas public colleges and universities are in a fairly good place in terms of overall growth for the past decade. However, based on our previous review of birth data, first-time-in-college students entering higher education in fall 2024 coincided with babies born in 2006. This is important, because 2006 was the next-to-last year where the number of live births in Texas increased before peaking in 2007. While the enrollment data above are encouraging, care must be taken to interpret those data within the broader context of future challenges that public institutions in Texas will face, as the reality of declining births reaches higher education in the years to come.