One of the most interesting enrollment trends at the University of Wisconsin in recent history has been the shift toward accommodating an ever-larger population of out-of-state students. Currently, UW now enrolls over 9,500 more students than they did in fall 2011 — the earliest year with publicly accessible enrollment records — yet the number of students from Wisconsin in that same time period has decreased by 972, according to enrollment data from 2011 and preliminary data from 2024.
To put it another way, the student population of UW has grown by more than 18% in the last 13 years, but there are now fewer Wisconsin residents attending UW than there were in 2011.
Without getting too bogged down in the specifics of UW enrollment data in the last 15 years, it is important to highlight a few dates. In 2013, Republican lawmakers enacted legislation to freeze tuition prices for Wisconsin residents, according to the Wisconsin State Journal. Then, in 2015, UW lifted an enrollment cap that limited the number of out-of-state enrollments to a maximum of 27.5% of the total student body, according to a statement from the UW Office of the Chancellor.
Without the ability to raise tuition for Wisconsin residents and no cap on out of state enrollment the makeup of the student body quickly changed. Out of state enrollment jumped by 29% from fall 2016 to fall 2019, and the tuition revenue rose 47% over that same time period, according to Higher Ed Dive. The new revenue generated by rising out of state enrollment was primarily used to fund financial aid for lower-income students.
The question of why UW has suddenly become such a vector for students across the U.S. and even the world has no definitive answer, but one smaller piece of the puzzle, California, does have some likely explanations.
To be clear, the point of this article is not to argue that UW now accepts too many students from California or is somehow capitulating to “outsiders.” In fact, the growing out-of-state population has in many ways enabled UW to better serve its in-state population by significantly increasing financial aid and institutional grants, according to Higher Ed Dive and Higher Ed. The purpose of this article is merely to illustrate the most probable reasons that California enrollment numbers have been rising in recent years and why they are likely to continue rising.
In fall of 2010-2011, 890 students from California were enrolled. In fall 2024, 2,326 students from California are now enrolled. This places California solidly in the top three states supplying out of state students – behind Illinois (4,466) and Minnesota (3,931).
One simple explanation behind this trend is that without an enrollment cap on out of state students, UW has been able to accept California applications that they would have otherwise turned down before the lift. In other words, rising Californian enrollment does not necessarily mean that more people from California are applying, just that the school has been able to admit more of the ones that do.
That may account for some of the change, but I also think that more Californians actively seek out UW than before for three main reasons: the increasing competitiveness of University of California System schools, the ability of Californians to afford out-of-state tuition and UW’s rising stature as a top public university, especially in computer science.
In some ways, California has the best public university system in the country. Five of their university system schools appear in the U.S. News and World Report top ten public universities list, with UCLA and UC Berkeley occupying the number one and two spots respectively. UCLA is the 15th best school in the country, according to the U.S. News and World Report.
This would be great for California high schoolers if they all had a good chance of getting into the state’s flagship universities, but they don’t. In the fall 2024 admissions cycle, UCLA admitted just 10% of in state applicants and UC Berkley admitted just 15% of in state applicants, according to articles in the San Francisco Chronicle.
Unable to get in to the best California schools even with high grades and strong test scores, many California families are turning their sights to other high-ranked institutions out of the state.
UW is becoming an increasingly elite public institution. UW has been ranked among the top 40 institutions by the U.S. and World News Report since at least 2022, according to UW News. This year, Forbes added UW to its updated list of public Ivies, placing it alongside schools like the University of Michigan, University of North Carolina and the University of Virginia, according to NBC.
The UW School of Computer, Data and Information Sciences has also jumped in the rankings in recent years — rising from 17th in the country to 12th, in a two-way tie in 2023, according to UW News. It is possible that CDIS has had an additional pull on students from the nation’s tech capital.
The perception of UW as an elite institution has become so powerful, in fact, that UW leaders — fearing resentment from a Republican controlled legislature — have recently undertaken an ad campaign to combat perceptions that the university is too “elitist” and “leftist,” according to the Cap Times.
Ironically, the influx of out-of-state students and the prestigiousness and elitism of UW might be something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. As UW draws in more money and talent from across the world, it can take on greater expenditures, and, I would argue, wields more cachet.
Not only are the crapshoot admissions at the top UC schools pushing Californians out of state, but there are many Californians who can heft the out of state price tag. In 2021, the California Bay Area had the highest median household income among major U.S. metropolitan areas in the U.S., according to a California government website. Though UW’s 2024-2025 sticker price of $42,104 is no doubt expensive, it’s still a far cry from similarly ranked private universities like Boston College ($70,702), NYU ($62,796), and Tufts ($70,704).
California has all the right ingredients for being an exporter of college students, and UW has become a natural landing pad for many. The best UC schools are among the top universities in the nation, but they can only meet a tiny fraction of the in-state demand for higher education.
Meanwhile, UW has elbowed its way into the ranks of the elite and opened its arms to thousands more students from across the country and the globe. It should come as no surprise that enrollments from California have doubled in the past 13 years. We should expect them to keep rising.
