It was apparent something was up when applications at UAPB rose to more than 7,500 this year when last year the number was just over 4,700.
That off-the-chart interest in attending school at UAPB was a mix of first-time enrollees and transfer students.
There are several encouraging numbers, including the fact that the university has a 7% increase in new student enrollment for the fall semester, and it is seeing a 39% surge in transfer students, with Black males making up more than 43% of the student population. That last figure comes at a time when other HBCUs have about half that much representation from men.
Interim Chancellor Andrea Stewart made the numbers known recently when the University of Arkansas System Board of Trustees held their meeting on campus.
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“UAPB also saw a 45% increase in new student orientation participation in 2024,” said Moses Golden, vice chancellor for Enrollment Management and Student Services. “This is important because it ensures that students new to UAPB are ready to start class on day one. These increases, coupled with the uptick in first-time student enrollment, show that our strategic enrollment management strategies are working. They’ve been designed to increase the number of new students and ensure their success once they join the UAPB family.”
Attracting students to a campus is a difficult proposition. There are fewer students going to college — the number has dropped by more than 7% over the past decade, according to one source — so there is intense competition for students and the dollars they bring. To see the arrow pointing up, then, shows, as Golden said, that the strategies to reach, attract and enroll students are working.
The high five, of course, goes to Dr. Laurence B. Alexander, the former chancellor at UAPB, who left just recently for the top job at the University of Michigan-Flint. His track record here in gaining students and improving graduation rates, among other success stories, is likely the reason he was tapped to take the new job in Flint, where they are experiencing some of the same problems that UAPB had.
Alexander left some big shoes to fill, which makes the work that a search committee is doing all the more important.