The University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents voted to approve a waiver on UW’s current nonresident enrollment limit Friday.

The full board approved UW Chancellor Rebecca Blank’s resolution to lift UW’s 27.5 percent nonresident enrollment limit.

The resolution also requires at least 3,600 Wisconsin residents in each new freshman class, an increase from the previous 3,500. The resolution only affects UW and would be in effect from 2016-17 through the 2019-20 enrollment periods.

According to the Education Committee’s agenda for the resolution, UW only enrolled 3,452 students in 2009 when Wisconsin had its highest number of high school graduates. The resolution makes the minimum in-state enrollment about 150 students more than that.

The regents said the waiver’s purpose is to attract workers from other states and countries to Wisconsin to make up for the state’s serious shortage of skilled workers.

“We are losing too many of really good, talented students … because they are being recruited aggressively to go elsewhere,” UW System president Ray Cross said on Friday. “We can’t afford to lose that talent.”

Simultaneously, the number of Wisconsin high school graduates and the number of students enrolled in higher education in Wisconsin is decreasing, according to the resolution’s agenda. The overall workforce is also aging and more workers are retiring, the agenda said.

But under the resolution’s enrollment quota for Wisconsin residents, Blank said, UW would enroll close to 6 percent of the high school graduating class of the state, the highest UW has ever attained.

“The only way we get there and maintain our quality is if we go out and work hard to make sure that a higher share of those top students come to Madison,” Blank said at Friday’s meeting.

Under the resolution, UW must provide both an interim report to the Board of Regents in December 2017 and a final report in December 2019, describing admission and enrollment activity along with other relevant outcomes that result from the waiver.

It would be within the Board of Regents’ power, Blank noted, to modify the policy if they deem it necessary before the 2019-20 enrollment period ends.

Associated Students of Madison Chair Madison Laning said in a statement that the Board’s argument that the resolution will attract more Wisconsin students is “inefficient” because Blank also said the number of Wisconsin students would not be affected.

“Our university should be continually trying to attract and recruit the top students in Wisconsin and outside of Wisconsin, and I do not see how waiving the cap helps influence this initiative,” Laning said.

Blank and Cross did not make formal statements following the Board’s vote Friday.

Emma Palasz contributed reporting to this article.