BYU-Idaho reaches largest enrollment in university’s history

Official fall enrollment totals for both on-campus and online students at Brigham Young University-Idaho are each the largest in university history.

“We had more than a thousand students this fall than we had last fall,” said Brett Crandall, the Media Relations Manager for the university. “That’s about an eight percent increase compared to last year.”

Exact numbers show a total campus enrollment of 17,562 students for fall 2015. That’s an 8.4 percent over last fall’s campus enrollment of 16,193.

Crandall says the university was anticipating the increase as a large number of students have returned from LDS missions.

In total there are 8,284 male students, and 9,278 female students (47.2% and 52.8% respectively). The school still sports a large married student population with 4,081 students claiming spouses (23.2% of the student population)

BYU-Idaho’s online courses are also growing rapidly. “The number of online students actually exceeds the number of on campus students,” said Crandall. “We expect that growth to continue as well.” In total 25,189 students are enrolled in online courses. That’s a 33.5 percent increase compared to this time last year.

BYU-Idaho’s growth is a big reason why Rexburg is expanding and growing. It’s also why the city’s spent a lot of money to accommodate the increase of students. “We’ve looked holistically at the growth and what that can provide, and what we can provide to let that growth happen,” said Scott Johnson, Rexburg’s director of Economic Development.

Business target towards lower income brackets are particularly doing well, as students typically don’t have tons of extra money. “They don’t have the same spending habits as a normal family, but they still bring disposable income, they still bring the dollars.,” said Johnson. “So they help businesses, and we see business growth and expansion in a large part because of the university.”