Official numbers: U of A sees 18.5% drop in freshman class

Of the first-year undergraduate class, 69% are Arizona residents, nearly 29% are out-of-state students and 1.8% are international students, UA said.

The 18% drop is in addition to the 19% decline the UA saw last year in first-year undergrads — going from 9,300 in fall 2024 to 7,500 in fall 2025.

The decline this fall is slightly smaller a projection the Arizona Daily Star reported in August, based on preliminary internal data provided by UA sources. The projection then was for 5,800 first-year undergraduates.

UA’s official announcement Thursday also reported that more than 30% of first-year students are first-generation college students.

Total enrollment this fall, including Arizona Online and UA’s Global Campus, is recorded at 67,714. Removing the university’s global campus’ numbers, UA’s total enrollment rests at 49,104.

In addition to the 6,111 first-year undergraduate students, the university is also welcoming 2,387 transfer students in its new undergraduate class, the announcement said. This is also a decrease from the transfer student numbers of previous years — 2,675 in fall 2025 and 2,584 in fall 2024.

New student enrollment in the W.A. Franke Honors College has increased by 29.6% in the last year. This college ranks first in Arizona for receiving the largest number of Flinn Scholarships, which are given to the state’s most accomplished undergraduate students. 

“The University of Arizona’s land-grant mission has always been to serve the people of Arizona, and this entering class is clear proof that we are fulfilling that mission,” said UA President Suresh Garimella in a written statement.

“The majority of our incoming first-year students are Arizonans, a third are first-generation college students and we have welcomed the largest Honors College class in our history,” he said. “These students are prepared, and they are supported by an institution that has made a deliberate commitment to their success from day one. A U of A degree opens doors, and our responsibility is to make sure every qualified Wildcat who wants to walk through those doors has the opportunity to do so.”

The average grade point average of the new first-year students this fall is 3.55. More than 40% of students have a high school GPA higher than 3.75, and nearly 36% are in the top 10% of their graduating class.

The enrollment of transfer students to the UA from Pima Community College has increased by 5.7% and is now at its highest level since 2020.

“Our respective leadership teams and advisors have engaged intentionally over the past two years on ways to increase our transfer rates from Pima Community College to the University of Arizona,” said Ian Roark, provost and executive vice chancellor at Pima Community College, in the UA's news release.

“It’s excellent news that the number of Pima Community College students who have transferred to the University of Arizona has increased year over year for a second straight year, reaching the highest level since 2020. The openness and welcoming approach of the University's leadership team, deans and faculty, and our own efforts in strengthening university transfer pathways at Pima are showing promising early results.”

When it comes to scholarships, more than 33% of first-year students and more than 39% of UA in-state students this fall are eligible to receive Pell Grants, a form of federal, need-based financial aid for undergraduate students.

UA’s four-year graduation rate has risen to 61.2% from 57% last year. This is in line with UA Provost Patricia Prelock’s goals to increase the university’s first-year student retention rate to 90% and four-year and six-year graduation rates to 65% and 85% respectively.

Garimella and Prelock have publicly discussed their new enrollment strategy to intentionally shrink the university’s enrollment and be more selective in admitting students. Their strategy includes bringing academically prepared students to the UA and focusing on retention and graduation rates.

“For too long, higher education has been caught in a numbers game,” Prelock wrote in an op-ed in the Star last year. “Each fall, universities race to celebrate enrollment growth, as though more automatically means better. But headcount alone masks the mission: whether students are prepared for the rigor of the university, how many progress toward degrees, and, ultimately, how many graduate prepared for meaningful work and fulfilling lives.”

Last year, while opening applications for the fall 2026 semester, the UA instituted a new admissions process, setting an initial deadline of Nov. 1 for students to apply, and then continuing to review later applications on a rolling basis through the fall and spring semesters.

In the spring, some UA faculty members said these changes reduced the number of applications the university received and put non-traditional students at a disadvantage. Faculty said then that empirical research shows that students applying under hard, early deadlines such as Nov. 1 are more likely to be white, affluent students with high test scores, high grade-point averages and college-educated parents.

Internal university data the Star obtained in August indicated applications dropped dramatically for this year’s fall semester — by about 24% for in-state students, 33% for out-of-state students and 81% for international students.

Nationally, universities have been dealing with a drop in traditional college-age students caused by a declining U.S. birth rate that began during the Great Recession around 2007.

Additionally, the number of international students arriving on visas to the U.S. declined by 28.5% in July 2025 compared to July 2024, according to U.S. International Trade Administration data in a Forbes article in August. The drop included a decline of almost 50% in students from India.

Under the Trump administration since January 2025, the Department of Homeland Security revoked the visas of thousands of international students studying at universities across the country.

Additionally, the Trump administration’s travel ban on nationals of 19 countries, the temporary suspension of visa interviews and limited appointment availability were expected to result in the decline of new international student enrollment this fall, Forbes reported.

Kristina Wong Davis, UA’s vice president for enrollment management and dean of admissions, said the landscape for higher education enrollment is changing “dramatically” throughout the country and that she’s proud of the UA for “establishing a clear direction for now to navigate it.”

“I greatly appreciate the collaboration with high school counselors in Tucson and across Arizona as we worked through several changes to better serve incoming students,” Davis said.

UA Faculty Chair Leila Hudson said while the president and provost have made it clear their strategy is to curtail year-over-year growth in student admissions, “there is a feeling on campus that nearly 20 percent drops in first-time, full-time student enrollment for two years in a row will put a strain on the tuition revenues that comprise most of our operating budget in light of ever shrinking state appropriations.”

“We have yet to hear what exactly these admissions numbers mean in terms of revenue. Deans and department heads are worried about shortfalls in their operating budgets with such a dramatic drop in new enrollment across the board,” she wrote to the Star Thursday. “We have a budget model that incentivizes excellence, growth, and good stewardship of resources; now we need to implement it without cutting faculty and staff jobs or support for students.”

UA Chief Financial Officer John Arnold told the Arizona Board of Regents in June that the UA’s net tuition revenue was projected to drop by slightly less than 1% in the upcoming fiscal year.

Hudson said UA administration recently reassured the Faculty Senate Executive Committee that there will be no mid-year budget cuts, and she said faculty members need a similar reassurance about “preserving the faculty and staff jobs that allow the university to operate.”

“A smaller student body should be an opportunity to have more and smaller classes and lower student to faculty and staff ratios to enhance the student experience,” she said.