This academic school year is seeing the highest number of students in the University of Wisconsin-Platteville history. The number of enrolled undergraduate students has increased one-percent since last year.

The campus takes a count of how many students are enrolled at UW-P on the first day of classes; Then on the tenth day of classes, they recount how many students are enrolled. This presents the 10-day number.

The 10-day numbers are showing that 7,975 students are enrolled in undergraduate degrees, and 830 students are enrolled in graduate programs. The graduate program has also seen a small increase in students. Another milestone for the university is that this year’s freshmen class is the largest on record of 1,659 students.

However, increased enrollment is nothing new to the Platteville campus. In the past five years, enrollment has skyrocketed 11 percent. With more students attending UW-Platteville, it opens up lots of new opportunities like new housing buildings, renovating old housing buildings, new academic buildings, a wider variety of classes and more opportunities for students on campus.

“We’re not looking at huge growth at this point. We’re really trying to sustain manageable growth for the campus, and make sure that we’re maintaining overall health for the institution,” Heidi Tuescher-Gille, Interim Director of Admission and Enrollment Services said. “So, we probably will see some growth [in the future], but it will be smaller than it has been in the past few years and that’s intentional.”

Despite the enrollment spike, the number of high school graduates in the state of Wisconsin is decreasing annually. UW-Platteville relies on the Tri-State Initiative (TSI) for its increase in enrollment in the future years.

Although more students on campus can offer more opportunities, many students are worried about the availability of housing, class sizes, land and parking.

“It’s good to see the campus is getting bigger, but that also means we need to expand and I don’t see that happening because there’s not enough land for us to expand,” Liz Cunningham, senior elementary education major said.

Student parking on campus has not been affected with more students on campus.

“We haven’t been at capacity when it comes to parking,” Scott Marquardt, University Chief of Police said. “People think that because they can’t find a parking stall exactly where they want it, that parking is terrible. When in fact, they might have parking five minutes away.”

There are about 100 open stalls on Greenwood Avenue in Lot 21.

“Increased enrollment is always great because that means that we’re doing the right thing and people want to take our classes,” Department Chair of the Biology department Dr. Kristopher said. “But it also means that there are challenges and unless the infrastructure is there to support it, it can be a real problem.”