Photo by Kendall Bulkiewicz | The Crow’s Nest
By Riley Benson
This fall semester, USF reported a record-breaking number of over 68,000 applicants to the university — a 5% increase from last fall.
Yet, even with this overall increase in new students and applicants across all campuses, USF St. Petersburg has an overall decline in new students compared to last fall.
The campus saw 512 new undergraduate students this semester, compared to 740 new students last fall, according to the USF InfoCenter.
Photo courtesy of USF InfoCenter
Photo courtesy of USF InfoCenter
As for undergraduate minority groups, most have seen a decline this semester in terms of new students on campus, except for Black students, which have stayed roughly the same since last year.
Black students comprise almost 7% of the USF St. Petersburg campus population, compared to 6% in 2022.
“Building a diverse student population is a journey, not a destination,” Christian Hardigree, regional chancellor of USF St. Petersburg, told The Crow’s Nest in 2022.
Additionally in terms of diversity, the St. Petersburg campus hosts more than 50% of white undergraduate students, almost 25% Hispanic students and 5% Asian students.
American Indian and Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islanders both make up less than 1% of the student population at the St. Petersburg campus. Students of “two or more” races make up less than 5%, according to the USF InfoCenter’s 2024 headcount.
Photo courtesy of USF InfoCenter
Despite these numbers, USF stated that they are “welcoming approximately 6,700 students across all three campuses, a 14% increase from last year,” which reflects the steady increase in college students since the pandemic.
This semester, across all USF campuses, the university has almost 40,000 undergraduate students, the highest since fall 2020.
