LARAMIE, Wyo. — Both first-time student enrollment and tuition have increased at the University of Wyoming (UW) this year.
According to the university, the number of first-time students attending UW has grown by 10.2 percent this fall. This is the second year in a row that UW’s incoming class has topped the previous year’s enrollment.
Some 1,627 first-time students have enrolled in the state’s university, up from 1,477 in fall 2021 and 1,424 in fall 2020. The new class includes 969 Wyoming residents, up 6.6 percent from last year’s 909, and 658 nonresidents, an increase of 15.8 percent from last year’s 568.
“Our in-state enrollment of first-time students is now well ahead of what we’ve seen in the last decade-plus, and we’re delighted to see the robust increase in the nonresident first-time headcount, which had taken the biggest hit as a result of COVID-19,” Vice Provost for Enrollment Management Kyle Moore says. “Two straight years of increases in first-time enrollment give us good reason to believe we soon will turn the corner on the pandemic-driven drop in overall enrollment, which institutions across the country have experienced.”
As enrollment has increased, the cost to attend has too.
In 2021, tuition for full-time students was $4,350 a year for in-state students and $18,090 a year for out-of-state students. The 2022 tuition & fees are now $6,277 for Wyoming residents and $20,827 for out-of-state students.
Experts say that tuition increases across the U.S. can be largely attributed to rising demand and limited supply.
In 2020, Forbes reported that tuition inflation has risen at a faster rate than the cost of medical services, child care and housing and the net price of public four-year colleges has still more than doubled since the turn of the century.
