<p>In the early years (1910-1940) UChicago had about the same number of undergraduates as, say, Stanford. Then in the 50s UChicago’s undergraduate enrollment “collapsed,” as Dean Boyer put it, when the Hyde Park neighborhood became seen as a bad neighborhood. The University rounded the corner in the 80s and has made a remarkable comeback since then.</p>
<p>But before the turnaround, the drop in enrollment had an effect on UChicago’s finances compared with other top universities, as the UChicago Magazine noted in 1999:</p>
<p>“Because the undergraduate population is small relative to the size of the graduate population, Chicago is the only major university for which the compensation of the faculty in the arts and sciences exceeds the net undergraduate tuition. For example, in 1993 the difference between net undergraduate tuition revenue and the compensation of the arts and sciences faculty at Harvard, Stanford, and Yale averaged a surplus of $35 million. At the University of Chicago that year, the difference was negative $4 million.” </p>
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<p>Dean Boyer summed things up in 2008 in his annual speech to the College Faculty:</p>
<p>“The College suffered a reversal of fortune in the early 1950s, and the ill effects of this lasted for over forty years. The crisis was most visible in light of our enrollment. We were a College of substantial size and presence on campus before the World War II (when we were also as large or larger than our academic peers), but by 1953 we had lost half our enrollment and had fewer than 1,400 students by 1954. We did not return to our pre-1940 size until the mid-1980s. In conjunction with the enrollment crisis, and accelerating in its wake, came a crisis of resources. A small and often embattled College became a kind of de facto self-fulfilling prophecy, and as a result it was all too easy to ignore the kinds of investments that would have allowed the College to grow back to robust health.
The College’s demographic collapse occurred exactly at the time that other top
private universities began to expand in the 1950s and 1960s. This collapse disadvantaged the College, creating a campus culture marked by high attrition rates, low graduation rates, and a milieu that many students found unsupportive, especially in the world beyond the classroom. This cultural situation also hurt the University badly, both because of loss of tuition income and alumni support, and also because of a loss of national visibility in undergraduate admissions.
During the 1980s and 1990s, the dual challenges of demography and disinvestment in the College began to be overcome. Over the last decade, a new student culture has emerged that is very positive about the University. The admissions situation of the College is vastly improved, not only quantitatively but also qualitatively. Current students are talented as well as strongly loyal and happy, and prospective students see this immediately when they visit campus and meet them.”</p>
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<p>In comparison…</p>
<p>Stanford Undergrad Enrollment Over Time:
[Through</a> The Years: Stanford University Facts](<a href=“http://facts.stanford.edu/chron.html#facultylist]Through”>http://facts.stanford.edu/chron.html#facultylist)</p>
<p>Year Undergraduate Students<br>
1900 1,055<br>
1910 1,498<br>
1920 2,165<br>
1930 3,103<br>
1940 3,460<br>
1950 4,805<br>
1960 5,648<br>
1970 6,221<br>
1980 6,630<br>
1990 6,555<br>
2000 6,548<br>
2001 6,637<br>
2002 6,731<br>
2003 6,654<br>
2004 6,753<br>
2005 6,705<br>
2006 6,689<br>
2007 6,759<br>
2008 6,812<br>
2009 6,878<br>
2010 6,887<br>
2011 6,927</p>