In 2022, LSU is expected to welcome the largest, most diverse freshman class the university has ever seen.
Sound familiar?
Some variation of that statement graces LSU’s social media and official releases every September once enrollment numbers are calculated, with freshman enrollment numbers provided by the university surpassing those of previous years each year for the past decade.
It is safe to assume that the size of the incoming freshman class will be larger than last year’s class of 10,622, LSU spokesperson Ernie Ballard said.
But as freshman classes increase at an average rate of about 7.5%, administrators and students alike have begun to question whether this rapid growth is sustainable with the university’s current housing and parking infrastructural facilities.
The largest single-year growth in freshmen population was between 2019 and 2020, which increased from 8,633 to 10,187.
Outgoing Executive Vice President and Provost Matt Lee has expressed concerns that the growth LSU experienced in recent years, despite bringing in more revenue to the university, is putting strain on its capacity.
“We’ve just gone through five years of enrollment growth,” Lee said at a faculty executive committee meeting on May 25. “Now what’s the plan because it’s not clear that we can sustain another five years of five percent incremental enrollment growth.”
Lee passes the question of an incrementally growing student population and role of provost to Roy Haggerty.
In his short time on campus, Haggerty has begun to notice the effects of incremental growth over the last five years that Lee spoke about in May, especially in the realm of student housing.
“This year, we were unable to accommodate several hundred sophomore and above students who wanted to live in LSU apartments. This was due to the unprecedented number of sophomores and above seeking housing this year,” Haggerty said. “Until this year, we had never achieved full capacity in our apartment inventory.”
Currently, LSU has four on-campus apartment complexes: East and West Campus Apartments, Nicholson Gateway Apartments and Edward Gay Apartments, the latter being for graduate and doctoral students.
As a result of LSU’s incremental growth since 2011, 11 new buildings have been constructed since 2012, including six freshman residence halls. During the same time period, four residential facilities underwent significant renovations.
According to Ballard, on-campus housing, excluding Edward Gay Apartments, has a capacity of 8,493. There are currently 8,490 students assigned to live in dorms and apartments, consisting of 6,184 first-year students and 2,306 upperclassmen.
“Our goal is always to start as close to full capacity as possible, understanding we will have some melt, that is [a] phenomenon that every campus manages with the start of each semester,” Ballard said.
LSU’s carrying capacity isn’t solely a discussion of housing between administrators, but an issue becoming increasingly apparent for many students across the university’s parking lots.
“It’s the opposite of sustainable,” said Landon Zeringue, a political science sophomore living at East Campus Apartments. “Before upperclassmen even moved into ECA, the parking lot is beyond capacity and the UREC is almost the same during the day.”
Zeringue explained that about three of ECA’s 14 buildings are occupied by freshmen, an issue he feels is unfairly attributed to Residential Life.
“Then there’s nothing done about parking with Res Life wanting to build more parking lots off campus and increase transport,” Zeringue said. “Buildings are also being closed and demolished like Kirby and turned into green space instead of housing or another parking tower.”
Parking is another area where LSU’s capacity is strained, students say.
“Remember last year when they issued like 2,000 more parking passes than available parking spaces? It’s about to get so, so much worse,” chemical engineering senior Kyra Boudreaux said.
In 2021, LSU briefly rezoned the parking lot of the Parker Agricultural Coliseum to exclusively be occupied by campus residents, including the increasing freshmen classes. As a result, many commuters were forced to park elsewhere until a few months later, when the lot was rezoned to accommodate residents and commuters.
This, Boudreaux explained, is emblematic of the university approaching its carrying capacity.
“There’s already so much strain on our resources,” said Boudreaux, a resident at Nicholson Gateway. “Housing and parking are pushed to their limits every year but admin keeps letting in more and more people every year.”
As each incrementally larger freshmen class progresses past living in dorms and onto life in on-campus apartments, the university’s population will begin to reach its carrying capacity unless changes are made. One of Haggerty’s priorities, he explained, is solving these issues of hitting capacity.
“In terms of teaching capacity, several units across campus are stretched,” Haggerty said. “To grow further, some units will need additional faculty.”
Lee, in the same meeting where he addressed the problem of unsustainable growth, explained that LSU needs to seek avenues to increase the university’s budget to accommodate current students without continuing to increase class size.
“The obvious one would be to increase tuition, but we don’t have tuition authority so that is off the table,” Lee said. “We are having to honestly rely more on philanthropic dollars, but the work I’ve been trying to focus on over the past year, is not on individual level philanthropy but on corporate partnerships and industry based partnerships because they have big money.”
Lee also said that the university is seeking, over the next 12 months, to deepen its relationship with the state legislature to secure more funding for the state’s flagship university and the value that comes with that designation.
To solve the issues of capacity and class sizes that have no sign of getting smaller, Haggerty is looking to work closely with Residential Life on a range of options that will allow for the best path to sustain growth of the student body going forward.
“We are in the early stages of those conversations now,” Haggerty said.
LSU students gather together Monday, Aug. 15, 2022, during the LSU RHA Block Party outside the Pete Maravich Assembly Center on N. Stadium Drive in Baton Rouge, La.
