ISU enrollment history
- Thread starter hoosman
- Start date
I am going to believe this is why enrollment increased until someone can disprove this.
Me too. I need to take a trip over someday when classes are in to see what it's like.
From 2011 to 2015 you could feel the 5-6k increase. I thought 30k was nice. Bustling all the time but not overcrowded. When I was graduating, it was horrible walking across central campus trying to get to certain classes.
The article linked below is about ISU housing during WWII and immediately after. It mentions some enrollment figures around that time:
3800: the lowest enrollment during the Depression (1933-34)
7000: enrollment around 1940
8400: enrollment in 1945
9200: enrollment in 1946
https://isualumblog.wordpress.com/2014/06/26/the-1940s-iowa-state-and-a-world-at-war/
3800: the lowest enrollment during the Depression (1933-34)
7000: enrollment around 1940
8400: enrollment in 1945
9200: enrollment in 1946
https://isualumblog.wordpress.com/2014/06/26/the-1940s-iowa-state-and-a-world-at-war/
One of my professors (who used to work in the President's Office for Martin Jischke) told me an interesting story about the expansion of ISU back in the day...
In the 1960s and early 1970s, ISU's enrollment was growing very quickly. I do not have any data to back this up, but with the expanding demographics of the U.S. (the Baby Boomers, first born in 1946 and 1947, were hitting college age), various GI bills bringing a lot of new money and veterans into the system, same for federal research dollars, and the increased "drift" towards college as a ticket to the professional class, it is not hard to imagine.
ISU was looking at rapidly-escalating enrollment throughout the 1960s, and they thought they would run out of space on the main campus north of Lincoln way and south of the railroad tracks. This was also before the ISU Center and before so many more students lived in off-campus housing, so you had to account for a lot more housing *and* athletics facilities being packed into the same space. They knew they had to expand campus.
Some of this eventually happened in other forms (e.g., the closure of Clyde Williams, JTS, the opening of Frederickson Court, etc.) but, at the time, their big plan was...
...a satellite campus!
Here it is in its modern form...
They bought up a bunch of agricultural land south of Campustown with the idea of eventually developing the space as a secondary campus. The four towers and their associated community center were intended as the centerpiece of this new campus, and they thought they would move one of the more "self-contained" colleges -- likely the College of Engineering and/or the scientific portions of what we now call LAS -- out there into new spaces.
The idea was to have some mass transit between the two beyond even buses, for freshmen to start at the main campus before engineering undergraduates and graduate students moved out to South Campus, and for the growth in other colleges to eventually start to absorb the old engineering buildings (sort of how LAS eventually absorbed Marston Hall for languages and culture and a few other things, if I remember correctly).
In the meantime, having nothing else to do with the space, they made a cross country course and some nominally temporary athletics facilities. These were nonessential luxuries that they could plow under later for no cost when they needed more square feet.
Then... ISU stopped growing. The college boom subsided. The wave of new students in the 1960s and 1970s petered out, more and more students started living off-campus (freeing up the campus space for instructional and research edifices, rather than residencies), and the ISU Center happened, which freed up further space. The satellite campus has eventually became auxiliary space for renovations and essentially permanent athletics facilities.
In the 1960s and early 1970s, ISU's enrollment was growing very quickly. I do not have any data to back this up, but with the expanding demographics of the U.S. (the Baby Boomers, first born in 1946 and 1947, were hitting college age), various GI bills bringing a lot of new money and veterans into the system, same for federal research dollars, and the increased "drift" towards college as a ticket to the professional class, it is not hard to imagine.
ISU was looking at rapidly-escalating enrollment throughout the 1960s, and they thought they would run out of space on the main campus north of Lincoln way and south of the railroad tracks. This was also before the ISU Center and before so many more students lived in off-campus housing, so you had to account for a lot more housing *and* athletics facilities being packed into the same space. They knew they had to expand campus.
Some of this eventually happened in other forms (e.g., the closure of Clyde Williams, JTS, the opening of Frederickson Court, etc.) but, at the time, their big plan was...
...a satellite campus!
Here it is in its modern form...
They bought up a bunch of agricultural land south of Campustown with the idea of eventually developing the space as a secondary campus. The four towers and their associated community center were intended as the centerpiece of this new campus, and they thought they would move one of the more "self-contained" colleges -- likely the College of Engineering and/or the scientific portions of what we now call LAS -- out there into new spaces.
The idea was to have some mass transit between the two beyond even buses, for freshmen to start at the main campus before engineering undergraduates and graduate students moved out to South Campus, and for the growth in other colleges to eventually start to absorb the old engineering buildings (sort of how LAS eventually absorbed Marston Hall for languages and culture and a few other things, if I remember correctly).
In the meantime, having nothing else to do with the space, they made a cross country course and some nominally temporary athletics facilities. These were nonessential luxuries that they could plow under later for no cost when they needed more square feet.
Then... ISU stopped growing. The college boom subsided. The wave of new students in the 1960s and 1970s petered out, more and more students started living off-campus (freeing up the campus space for instructional and research edifices, rather than residencies), and the ISU Center happened, which freed up further space. The satellite campus has eventually became auxiliary space for renovations and essentially permanent athletics facilities.
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This corroborates a story my dad told me when he was in school in the 70s. He had an old Iowa State Daily that showed the "vision" when I was cleaning out his desk once he passed away. I'll have to remember to dig it out again next time I go back to that house.
Yeah, I always had some ambition of digging back through old school newspapers or facilities records to see what exactly they were planning with it.
I thought it would make a nice article.
I would love to see any documents or literature you could find.
I'm trying to remember the enrollment numbers when I was at ISU. '76-'80. Seems like it was around 23,000. U of I was just a tad more. Maybe 25,000-ish.
Of course there were 4 towers dorms then, before they blew up Knapp-Storms. And at the beginning of the Fall Quarters there were several 2-man rooms per floor in the towers that had 3 guys in at the beginning. Of course after a couple weeks enough had either not shown up or quit for whatever reason that around mid September all the 3-man situations were resolved back to only 2 guys/room.
Of course there were 4 towers dorms then, before they blew up Knapp-Storms. And at the beginning of the Fall Quarters there were several 2-man rooms per floor in the towers that had 3 guys in at the beginning. Of course after a couple weeks enough had either not shown up or quit for whatever reason that around mid September all the 3-man situations were resolved back to only 2 guys/room.
