The economy is causing more than just cuts in the budget. The 2009 Enrollment Report released Friday by the Office of Budget and Planning showed a 1 percent decrease in total enrollment from 28,194 students in 2008 to 27,992 students.Chancellor Michael Martin said this decrease is not significant, and the University has done well in terms of enrollment after two hurricanes, an economic downturn and budget cuts.In 2008, 4,817 students were in the freshman class, but this fall, only 4,513 freshmen enrolled.Mary Parker, executive director of the Office of Undergraduate Admissions, said some of the reasons for this 6 percent decrease are the number of high school students in Louisiana decreasing and the economic situation causing an increase in community college enrollment.”As an admissions director, certainly our objective is to go out and achieve [our enrollment] goal,” Parker said. “But we did not decrease the quality of our class. We stand by the students who were admitted and who enrolled. I am really happy about our freshman class that came in.”Enrollment among graduate students has increased by 4 percent from 4,428 graduate students in 2008 to 4,614 graduate students.”Looking at the downturn in the economy, a lot of people use this time to go back to school,” Parker said. “If they were laid off, they may look at going back for something else. Students who could not find a job, they may look to come back to graduate school.”Parker said the University has also seen an increase in transfer students and international students.Parker said the University saw an increase in applications for this fall despite decreased enrollment.”In 2008, we had 15,156 [people apply], and in 2009, we had 16,030 [people apply],” Parker said. “What we’ve seen as a national trend is that students this year applied to multiple places. They put in applications everywhere and really looked at what would be best economically.”Parker said her office has increased its efforts to recruit out-of-state students during the last two years, but it takes a couple of years to gain the trust of out-of-state residents to come to the University.Martin predicts enrollment to increase at the University because the retention rates keep improving.Parker said her office will continue to find new ways to recruit students. She said her office has Twitter, Facebook and Flickr accounts to better communicate with today’s prospective students.————Contact Mary Walker Baus at [email protected]