University of Arizona's enrollment drops by 2.7%

UA officials have said this was intentional under their new enrollment strategy, which started last fall, of bringing in smaller incoming classes.

Chief Financial Officer John Arnold said total enrollment at the UA, combining on-campus and online, will be down about 2.7%, with on-campus undergraduates being down 3.3%, online undergraduates down 6%, on-campus graduate students being higher by 1.9% and online graduate students also increasing by 3.4%.

Net tuition revenue is down 0.7% told the board, as the regents unanimously approved UA’s fiscal year 2027 budget at a meeting Thursday.

“These are changes that we planned for, as part of our enrollment methodology change,” Arnold told the regents. We “had this built into the budget and were prepared for it.”

In the past year, UA officials have also said they'll give out less merit-based aid to out-of-state students, prioritizing in-state students and those who need financial aid, to have smaller, “right-sized” classes.

UA’s total on-campus enrollment has fluctuated over recent years — 46,829 in FY22, 47,926 in FY23, 52,414 in FY24 and 55,649 in FY25. It's projected to be 54,084 in FY26 and 53,046 in FY27.

“Going back to fiscal ’22, the jump between fiscal ’23 and ’24 is bringing UAGC (University of Arizona Global Campus) into the university. That’s when they officially became part of the university,” said Arnold, adding context from the last few fiscal years to the enrollment numbers.

“But you’ll notice, while our total enrollment is down off of the 2025 peak, we’re still between ’24 and ’25 total enrollment, so still very healthy and positive, and these changes again were part of the overall business plan that we put in place a year ago, so right in line with where we want to be,” Arnold said.

While the UA has not given out official numbers for its incoming class this fall, UA Provost Patricia Prelock reported in May that out-of-state and international student enrollments are “trending lower than previous years across programs,” similar to last fall’s trends. International students’ interest in master’s programs is declining most steeply, Prelock said.

“At the national level, more students are signaling that they will stay closer to home,” she said. “Additionally, fewer international students intend to enroll at U.S. universities this year. These trends are driven by geopolitical, economic and policy factors that no single institution can control.”

Details of UA’s next budget

The 2027 fiscal year starts on July 1.

UA’s overall revenue totals $3.163 billion in the FY27 budget, down by $137.1 million or 4.2% in comparison to last fiscal year, according to ABOR documents. Officials have previously suggested this is partly due to drops in federal and state funding, though Arnold said grants and contracts are up by 1.1%.

“It’s important to underline context that’s going to be behind everything that you hear today, and that is about the macro-financial environment,” Bradley Kendrex, vice president of business management and finance for the Arizona Board of Regents, said at Thursday’s meeting. “It’s worth noting some specific pressures that are driving in here. Arizona’s universities are navigating what is probably one of the most complicated higher education ecosystems that have existed in recent memory.”

In terms of costs, Arnold said the UA’s educational and general expenditures per student will drop to $21,943, down from about $22,500 in FY26.

Overall UA operating expenses are down by 2.2%, he added, with personnel expenses down by 1%, scholarship expenses down by 3.6% and other expenses down by 5.3%.

“Resident (undergraduate) tuition remains unchanged, and the budget also eliminates our graduation fee and some other service fees,” he said. “We’re working to improve retention and graduation rates by increasing funding for counselors and other student support services.”

As to overall goals and priorities for the next year, Arnold said the UA has managed to bring all individual colleges’ fund balances into the positive area, which he said is a “big step.”

He said UA is investing in high-demand programs, including medical education, health professions and nursing.

“We’re also growing and strengthening our research infrastructure, where we’ll just work through a process to fully integrate the health sciences into the rest of campus, and there’s investments in engineering and mining, things we worked on really hard this year,” Arnold said.

News broke Tuesday that the Health Sciences unit — which has housed the colleges of medicine in Tucson and Phoenix, and the colleges of nursing, pharmacy and public health — is being dismantled and its various functions integrated into other parts of the larger university. The colleges and administrative units under health sciences will now be under the Office of the Provost, and the research centers will be moved to report to the Office of Research and Partnerships.

This move will lead to 28 layoffs in August, sources told the Arizona Daily Star.