Northwestern State University of Louisiana has announced the total number of students enrolled in the Fall 2025 semester, highlighting the largest freshman class in four years and a record number of transfer students, bringing campus housing to full capacity.
According to the press release, NSU currently has 8,402 students enrolled for the Fall 2025 semester, in contrast to the 8,523 students that were enrolled in the Fall 2024 semester.
Vanner Erikson, director of enrollment management, shared that when James Genovese took over as university president, he suggested a three-year enrollment master plan. Erikson explained that NSU is steadily working to increase total enrollment to 9,000 students and higher.
“We don’t have the infrastructure for that with housing, classes, rooms and things like that,” he said. “So I think slow and steady growth over the next few years is where I am. We want to get back up to that 9,000 total enrollment,” Erikson said.
While there was a decrease in total enrollment this semester, the number of incoming freshmen increased to over 1,100 students. Erikson explained that the number of incoming freshmen steadily increased over the last few years.
“We’re pretty pumped about it. Just to give perspective, last year was around 1,043 and was our final number, 1,052 the year before that. We’re definitely up in terms of entering freshmen and up in transfers too,” Erikson said.
Many transfer students are from other schools within the Northwestern region of Louisiana. Some of the schools include Louisiana State University’s Shreveport and Alexandria campuses and other University of Louisiana system schools.
There were 445 students that transferred to NSU this fall. Enrollment of transfers saw an 11 percent increase compared to the 400 last year.
“I think that students are transferring to NSU because we have a great product to offer that differs from other schools. We’re a personalized institution and we care about our students. That’s not always the case everywhere,” Erikson said.
The College of Nursing and School of Allied Health (CONSAH) continues to be the largest enrolled program on-campus. There are over 600 entering freshmen in the college for Fall 2025.
Aimee Badeaux, the academic dean of CONSAH, stated, “The College of Nursing has about 2,000 students, and the School of Allied Health has about 450 total students.”
According to Erikson, other programs like creative and performing arts, mathematics and STEM areas have tripled in size this past year and are looking to add more opportunities to those programs individually.
While the increase was praised, there were also challenges that arose with the influx of students. Erikson addressed housing’s full capacity for this semester.
“Our goal is to make sure that everyone’s safe and in a good space. So we’re doing the best we can, but it’s a good problem to have. I think my favorite thing is when people start complaining about traffic,” he said.
Erikson believes that recruiting has contributed to the increase in freshman enrollment. “Emily Miller is our director of recruiting. Over the last few years, we’ve rebuilt the way we recruit and we’re doing way more things with data and analytics and understanding where our students are coming from and doing what,” he said.
Aeryn Doucet, a junior hospitality and tourism major, explained she’s seen so many eager freshmen express their love for NSU. “This is probably the most exciting and packed it’s been since I’ve been here,” Doucet said.
Kaley Koss, a senior communication major, believes that it’s all a team effort to keep students engaged and growing.
“I think that promoting the activities at Freshman Connection makes a good impression on the freshman experience. It’s encouraging to see the freshman class grow and be more involved,” Koss said.
With the decrease of total enrollment and the increase in total freshman, NSU’s enrollment and recruitment teams will work together to stabilize enrollment data and aim for a higher number of students on campus.
