First-year enrollment hits new high

With the largest first-year class ever, University enrollment reached record levels this year, according to an official student count released Tuesday.

The class of 2001 has 5,534 students - 207 more than the fall 1996 entering class.

Associate Provost Lester Monts said the increase was not intentional, but the result of an inability to predict how many accepted students would decide to enroll in the University.

"We always accept more students than we eventually enroll," Monts said. "(This year) we had more students send in enrollment deposits than we expected."

While the number of minority students remained relatively stable, the number of students whose primary racial identity is unknown grew substantially, from 1,326 students in 1996 to 1,679 students, or 5.1 percent of the entering class.

Monts said the increase was not affected by recent attention to race-based admissions as a result of anti-affirmative action lawsuits against the University of Texas and the passage of California's Proposition 209.

"I think that a lot of students resent the whole notion of racial categories to start with," Monts said. "A lot of students don't feel that the racial categories designated by the state and federal governments apply to them."

Vice President for University Relations Walter Harrison attributed the jump to an increased attention to race nationwide.

"The general discussion of race in this country has led a lot of people to think about how they mark these boxes," Harrison said. "I think more people are reflecting on the nature of their own race, and that's manifested in this trend."

Harrison also said he is concerned about the increase in the size of the incoming classes over the past eight years.

"I can understand that this year we jumped up, but since this has been happening over the last eight years, we should have a discussion about how big we want to be as a university," Harrison said.

The number of international students grew from 3,200 in 1996 to 3,371 this fall, or 9.1 percent of the student body.

"The reputation of the University of Michigan as a premier, outstanding institution is worldwide," Monts said. "I'm sure news of the education our alums received here is being passed on to others in various parts of the world."

Enrollment statistics break down in the following ways:

• While the student body contains about 2,000 more men than women, the incoming first-year class was evenly split between between genders.

• Enrollment of black students dipped slightly, from 2,870 in 1996 to 2,842, making up 8.6 percent of the student body.

• The overall number of white students also declined, from 22,826 in 1996 to 22,761 - or 69.5 percent - in fall 1997.

• Enrollment of Asian students rose from 3,642 to 3,790, or 11.6 percent of the student body.

The increase in first-year students has made things a little tighter for the class of 2001.

University Housing prepared for larger incoming classes by adding 400 new spaces to residence halls during the past five years.

"But we're still at a density that we don't want to be at permanently," said Housing Director William Zeller.

Zeller said 300 students are living in overflow triples, and first-year students are living in Baits Housing and Parker House.

"Even with that, we're actually a little bit more crowded than we were a year ago," Zeller said.

LSA first-year student Annie Hammel said she feels the bulge of the bigger class.

"The cafeterias are extremely crowded and the dorms are incredibly crowded," Hammel said, adding she had trouble getting into sections of English 125 and other introductory-level courses.

10-30-97