At the Sept. 18 meeting of the Academic Senate, UTD President Richard Benson announced that UTD’s fall 2024 population had declined to 29,855 students, down from 30,885 students in fall 2023.
“We’ve had a two-year decline in enrollment, which is pretty much unheard of at UTD,” Benson said at the Academic Senate meeting. “It’s not a terrible decline but it is a measurable decline, and so we are going to spend quite a bit of time in the coming months examining this issue.”
The 5.4% decrease since 2022 comes after decades of rapid growth at UTD. Fall 2022 saw the largest-ever student body at UTD of 31,540 students, over double the 2004 population of 14,092 and a 29.27% increase from the 2014 population of 23,095. The fall 2024 population is UTD’s third-largest student body size, behind fall 2023 and fall 2022.
Benson said that UTD’s freshman class size has not been impacted and more transfer students and doctoral students are enrolling than in previous years. The only demographic group that is shrinking, according to Benson, is graduate students from India.
Additionally, Benson said the problem of declining enrollment is not unique to UTD and that the University of North Texas is facing a similar decline. In fall 2023, UNT reported 46,724 total students enrolled, and a Sept. 18 report stated that the university population was now at 46,309 students. In addition to the enrollment decline, UNT President Harrison Keller announced an $8.5 million cut to the 2024-2025 UNT budget.
UTD has not yet announced any budget decreases for fiscal year 2026. Fiscal year 2025 saw a 5.8% overall increase across all university fund expenditures, with the only fund experiencing a decrease being the educational and general fund, shrinking by $2.88 million.
“We stand out as the Texas school with the largest international population,” Benson said. “We are very dependent on these bright students, so we want to make sure that they continue to choose to come to UTD.”
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