Jameson Champion
Returning Florida Southern College students and faculty will be seeing a much larger number of new faces this year than normal, this is because FSC’s freshman class of 2021 is the largest in the college’s history.
On Sept. 10, Florida Southern’s census period ended, officially marking the class of 2025 as the largest in Florida Southern College’s history. According to the FSC Office Of Admissions, 792 total freshmen were introduced this school year, which not only makes this year’s freshman class the largest in recent memory, but also the largest in school history.
According to the FSC Office of Admissions, 2019 FSC’s freshman class was 685 students, and the freshman class in 2020 was 675. This means that between 2020 and 2021 there was about a 17.3 percent increase in new freshmen, a large jump compared to previous years.
According to FSC Vice President of Enrollment Management Erin Ervin, one influence on this class’s size was that the school had a lot of applicants to choose from.
“We certainly did have an impressive number of qualified applicants; in fact, we received a record 11,000+ applications from prospective students,” Ervin said.
According to Ervin there were many other factors which had an influence on the class’ size this year as well.
“We saw growth in enrollment for our Nursing, Computer Science and Business programs. Additionally, expanded academic program offerings in areas such as Finance and Interactive and Game design – coupled with CS concentrations in areas like Cybersecurity and Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning – attracted new interest from students pursuing programs and careers in STEM,” Ervin said.
Computer science programs in particular have seen particular growth, with the opening of the Weinstein Computer Sciences Center facilitating the expansion of many programs within the computer science major. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that jobs within STEM fields will see a 10 percent increase by 2030, and a growing computer science program is one which makes Florida Southern particularly attractive as a school for students within the fields of science, technology, engineering and math.
FSC has also grown as a destination for students from other states who may wish to attend college in the sunshine state.
“We also saw an increase in students coming from out of state; as a destination institution, Florida Southern attracts students from all over the country, and the Class of 2025 included students from 41 states and 25 countries,” Erwin said.
Many of these new FSC students are excited to be here, with some expressing how they enjoy being part of a larger group of students on campus.
“It’s cool having a large group of kids in the same level as you, especially at a small school like this,” Colton Wilensky said, one of FSC’s many new freshmen. “It’s not too huge because I’m still going to have my small group of friends, but it’s still very cool being part of this larger group.”
