President Merrill J. Bateman has announced that BYU will increase its annual enrollment by 2,000 students over four years beginning fall semester 1998.
The Board of Trustees approved the addition of 500 students per year until enrollment reaches 29,000 by the 20012 academic year. The change will involve mostly incoming freshmen and some transfer students.
According to President Bateman, “The aim is to meet increased demand by giving more students access to studies at BYU without expanding the campus or adding new buildings. This modest, four-stage increase will be accomplished primarily by making fuller use of existing facilities.”
BYU will schedule more classes during afternoons, a time of day when many classrooms are underused.
President Bateman said the university will add approximately 100 new faculty positions over the four-year period to accommodate the increase in students. Space for additional faculty will become available as several construction and remodeling projects are completed on campus during the next few years.
“Since most of the new students will be freshmen,” the president said, “special attention is being given to enhancing the freshman experience. This includes reducing class sizes, identifying and relieving pressure on bottleneck required courses, and limiting the use of graduate students in teaching entry level courses.”
This new initiative is the latest in a series of steps being taken to make fuller use of existing resources and shorten students’ time to graduation, President Bateman said. “This, in turn, enables more students to have the beneÞt of a BYU education.”
He noted that while BYU’s enrollment cap has remained constant since 1976, BYU will graduate about 2,000 more students during the current academic year than it did 10 years ago.