By SUSAN JONES
The final fall 2022 enrollment numbers for the Oakland and regional campuses show Pitt’s student population has remained relatively stable.
“We had a record number of applicants,” Steve Wisniewski, vice provost for budget and analytics, said about the Oakland campus at the October Budget Policies committee meeting. There were more than 50,000 applications to the Oakland campus, a little over 50 percent higher than the previous year, which had set a record.
Overall, there are close to 4,400 students in the first-year class in Oakland. That number is about 500 fewer than fall 2021, but is consistent with the three previous years. The incoming first-year class in 2021 was the largest ever and about 600 more than projected, largely because the pandemic, Pitt’s test-optional policy and use of the common application made it difficult to predict how many accepted students would decide to come to Pitt.
This year’s incoming class is closer to the target Pitt had set. The overall number of undergraduates on the Oakland campus is largely unchanged from last year — 19,980 in fall 2021 and 19,928 in fall 2022.
Two of the regional campuses — Greensburg and Johnstown — saw increases in the first-year class, while Bradford had a slight decrease. Johnstown jumped from 465 to 519 first-year students, while Greensburg increased from 328 to 412. Bradford’s freshman class declined from 312 to 305.
One of the reasons Pitt officials think the numbers increased at the two regionals is the high application numbers in Pittsburgh.
“One of the things we often do is if a student is not accepted to the Pittsburgh campus, they are optioned to the regionals,” Wisniewski said. “But in the past, we’ve had to hold onto those applicants until fairly late in the cycle because the demand wasn’t as high. With demand being this high, we felt that we could send optioned students to the regionals much sooner in the cycle and still meet our enrollment goals, but also help the regionals to meet their goals.”
The other closely watched statistic is first-year to second year retention, Wisniewski said. “Those are very important and really play into a lot of the rankings measurements, especially U.S. News and World Report. It’s a highly weighted metric. And we’ve been doing pretty well there.”
The retention rate from fall 2021 to fall 2022 in Oakland was 92.64 percent. For the regional campuses, same-campus retention was: Johnstown, 76.4 percent; Greensburg, 63.3 percent; and Bradford, 70.6 percent. The retention rate for regional students who stayed at any Pitt campus was: Johnstown, 78.4 percent; Greensburg, 73.1 percent; and Bradford, 73.4 percent.
Susan Jones is editor of the University Times. Reach her at suejones@pitt.edu or 724-244-4042.
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