Another record enrollment for BYU-Idaho
Fall enrollment for on-campus students at Brigham Young University-Idaho is estimated to be about 18,000 students. That’s a 6 percent increase from last fall.
But that doesn’t tell the whole story. To accommodate more students, the school has a unique three-semester system. Most students attend just two of those semesters per year. So when you add the students who are off this semester, total yearly on-campus enrollment is about 32,000.
The growth is expected to continue, according to Rob Garrett, senior officer for strategy and research.
“We do anticipate that we will continue to see growth,” Garrett said. “Recently, we had board approval to have our cap increased. We could be close to 40,000 by the time all is said and done. We think after 2020 we’ll hit that.”
Chamber of Commerce President Ted Austin says all that growth is good for business.
“Obviously, the benefit is associated with the more students, and the more faculty, then the more businesses come to Rexburg, and the more businesses that are here come to expand,” Austin said.
But both Austin and Rexburg Mayor Jerry Merrill say while the growth is great, it brings challenges too.
“The challenges are infrastructure — trying to find enough housing and places to put all of that housing where it makes sense — and then it depends on how you look at it,” Merrill said. “Some people like more people in town, and some people don’t, because there’s more traffic, more lines at the grocery stores.”
The university is looking to the private sector to provide more housing. They anticipate a need for 3,000 more beds to accommodate the increase in students in Rexburg over the next few years.
But the growth isn’t limited to the campus. The school serves 40,000 online students all around the world. The online population is growing even faster than on-campus. BYU-Idaho employs 1,500 online instructors. That’s more than the 825 on campus instructors.
University leaders say the growth is in line with the mission of the school as outlined by the board, which consists of top leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
At BYU-Idaho, there is an imperative to serve as many students as we can while we’re lowering the cost of education and increasing the quality of education,” Garrett said. “Now that’s interesting, because you may say, ‘How do you do all that at the same time?’ A lot of people on campus ask that, but there are deliberate efforts to figure that out and make that a reality.”
Garrett says students are drawn to the university for several reasons. Those include low cost, Mormon students wanting to gather with those of similar beliefs, and caring teachers.
“A big part of that is that we are not a research facility,” Garrett said. “We are a teaching institution where our faculty are focused on teaching. That really does align with the work we’ve done. When asking our students why they come here, that’s one of the main reason they come here, because of the faculty touch that’s at BYU-Idaho.
With all the projected growth, BYU-Idaho could well be serving more than 100,000 students online and on-campus within the next couple of years.
