Western Washington University’s strong freshmen numbers for fall 2023 show signs of recovery from enrollment dips during the pandemic.
This fall, 3,184 new freshmen are enrolled, the second-largest first-year class in Western history.
While the total number of students enrolled at Western sits well below pre-pandemic numbers, Shelli Soto, the associate vice president for enrollment management, said the university anticipated these numbers. Western’s junior and senior classes are smaller due to fewer students beginning college during COVID-19 restrictions.
This term’s total student headcount is 14,651, compared to 14,746 last fall.
“To see that our new classes coming in are actually bigger than our pre-pandemic classes is such an excellent sign of the strength of our position going into the coming years as an institution,” Soto said. “Next year, we should start to see the impact of these very large first-year classes starting to set the tone for the overall.”
Retention is an ongoing issue facing Western, but Soto said 79% of last year’s freshmen have come back this fall. That’s up slightly from 77% last year.
Western has nearly maintained its diversity levels. This fall, 4,108 students of color are enrolled — 28% of the total student body. Last fall, the university had 4,170 students of color, also around 28% of the student body. Sustaining the numbers of diverse students while enrollment dipped during the pandemic is a credit to the diversity and inclusion work on campus, Soto said.
Numbers of Black or African American students sits at about 3% of the total student population, while Hispanic or Latino students make up 11%.
The numbers of first-generation students sits at 22% this fall, down from 27% in fall 2021 and 30% in fall 2019.
In fall 2022, Western had 555 new first-generation freshmen, down from 746 the fall before and 908 in fall 2019. This fall, however, the first-generation new freshman population is 769.
“That’s dramatic, obviously,” she said. “The percentage that first-gen students make up in our first-year cohort this year does show those important signs of recovery in terms of our efforts to make sure that we are providing access to first-generation students and serving the state in that important way.”
This story was updated at 11:30 a.m. Thursday, Oct 12 to clarify the total student headcount and graph numbers, which now do not include continuing education students. This story was updated again at 5:15 p.m. to include students who reported their race as Black or African American and another race in the total percentage of Black students on campus.
