Leath: ISU expects more than 31,000 students this fall

Expected enrollment of more than 31,000 students this fall will push Iowa State University to essentially full capacity, ISU President Steven Leath said Thursday, and the numbers have officials studying just how many more students the university can handle.

If the fall enrollment expectations are realized, it would be the first time ISU's total enrollment has topped 30,000 students, and it would be the sixth consecutive year of enrollment growth.

After hearing the projections, Leath said, ISU officials made sure there would be enough capacity in residence halls, parking, dining, classrooms and laboratory space to handle the numbers.

"We'll be at full capacity," Leath said during a visit to the Iowa City Noon Rotary Thursday. "We're excited about it, but we also realize it's a big challenge."

The question lies in whether ISU can handle a continued increase in numbers, given the recent trend of enrollment growth there, Leath said.

"I asked, 'can we handle 35,000 students?' Everybody said 'no way,'" Leath said. "So there's some gap here, between barely being able to handle the students this fall and what if growth continues."

A university team is studying where the needs are if enrollment grows even more beyond the coming academic year, Leath said.

"We're working real hard this year to figure out what are the pressure points we need to deal with first if it looks like continued growth," he said.

ISU does plan to add more than 200 faculty jobs in the next 18 months to two years, Leath said. Part of that was planned faculty growth, but part is in response to the rising enrollment numbers, to keep quality high as more students fill classrooms, he said.

"It's the biggest hiring push we've seen in a long time," he said.

Much of the enrollment growth expected this fall comes from resident Iowa students, Leath said. He speculates that ISU's job placement rates in the high 90 percent range in agriculture and engineering, two traditional strengths of the university, are helping to draw students.