I’ve been affiliated with Wichita State for more than 25 years and even I get chills when I think about how far our university has come in that time. While enrollment typically hovered around 14,500 students annually for much of the last few decades, it’s eyebrow-raising that we just announced fall 2025 enrollment above 18,000 Shockers for the first time ever in in the university’s 130-year history. For an institution that started with just 16 students back in 1895, we’ve created sustained enrollment momentum in a time when students and families are pondering deeply about the return on investment for college.

Here’s a few highlights from our fall 2025 enrollment data:

• Wichita State achieved the highest headcount (18,458) and credit hours (170,521) in the university’s history.
• For the fifth year in a row, the freshmen class was larger than 1,600 students. The five largest freshmen classes in the university’s history have all occurred since 2021.
• Transfer students are continually choosing Shocker Nation, with the university being the state’s top transfer destination for 14 years in a row. Data indicates students from both two-year colleges and four-year universities in Kansas are transferring to Wichita State at a higher volume than any other school in the state.
• Gap-year students who enter Wichita State after taking time away from education post-high school have more than doubled since 2021.
• Since 2015, the number of new students living on campus has increased by 45 percent.
• Expansion of Wichita State's concurrent and dual enrollment programs led to more than 1,600 students gaining early access to college credit.

It’s no coincidence we’re hitting our all-time stride at a time when higher education is reflecting on what it needs to be for the future. It’s been a series of big bets that have paid off, fueling enrollment growth. Here’s a look at the transformational jumps Wichita State has made to get us to this point.

• More than 10 years ago now, Wichita State made a big bet on our now iconic 120-acre Innovation Campus. Closing an 18-hole golf course on campus yielded some upset community golfers, but the big payoff has been more than 20 new facilities, including two new residence halls, a new on-campus YMCA, restaurants and retail options and strategically potent partnerships with companies and organizations that hire our students for internships, research and applied learning opportunities.
• Our focus on applied learning is what separates Wichita State from all the rest. Each year our students earn more than $30 million in applied learning opportunities and internships spread across more than 9,000 experiences our students annually take advantage of. Our students not only graduate with the required courses, but they typically have multiple internships that demonstrate how they applied what they’ve learned with employers and community partners - such as Lauren, a student from Oklahoma, who shares how she was propelled by Wichita State to reach for the stars through an internship at NASA.
  
  
  

   

• Wichita State made an investment in student success in the last several years, resulting in a persistence rate increase for the fourth year in a row and an overall six percent increase since 2021. One of the biggest drivers for this is the $17 million investment in the new Shocker Success Center, which has created a home for student success and support-oriented offices all in one place.
  
•  Our next big bet is coming fast. In spring 2027, we’re scheduled to open the new Wichita Biomedical Campus downtown, a partnership between Wichita State and the University of Kansas. We’ll bring together Wichita State’s Health Professions programs, such as nursing, physical therapy, physician associate and more with KU’s medical and pharmacy schools, which were already located in our city. This partnership will command nearly a half-a-million square feet downtown, eventually enroll more than 3,000 students and reflect an investment of more than $300 million in Wichita’s downtown. Most importantly, though, a shared clinical space will allow our two universities plus WSU Tech to train our students together. When we train our healthcare practitioners with one another, we know we’ll have improved patient outcomes and better-prepared professionals.

I have the great fortune to be a part of the Wichita community through serving on boards and being involved in events all over our city. This allows me the opportunity to engage with people on a regular basis, hearing what their unfiltered opinions are of our university these days. I can confirm Wichita State students, supporters and alumni walk around with a bit more swagger these days and I’d note wearing black and yellow has never been more popular (with all due respect to our Shocker Men’s Basketball Final Four run in 2013).

While we welcome all seniors and transfers to apply now, we know you may still need a bit more fuel to fire your interest in Wichita State. One way to do just that is by viewing our episode on Amazon Prime TV’s streaming series, The College Tour, which was just released this summer. As the first and only university in Kansas to be featured, you can access more than an hour of highly visual, in-depth content that showcases many facets of Shocker life, all through digestible two-minute clips of what our university offers to today’s modern students.

It’s not hyperbole to say Wichita State has cracked the code on one way to be a university that is leaning into the future of what families expect from an institution of higher education, and what employers and communities need from both our graduates and the university itself. If ever there was a time to join Shocker Nation, this is the moment where you can be a part of a university that is rising above the trend line of higher education.