Enrollment Sets Record, Gains Slightly Dennis O'Shea ---------------------------------- Homewood News and Information A record 16,393 students are enrolled in the university this fall, up more than 2,000 from five years ago and more than 4,000 from the mid-1980s, the Homewood registrar's office reports. Though enrollment continues to rise, the increase is slowing. This year's university-wide student body is only 63 students, or 0.4 percent, larger than last year's. The gains in the three previous years were 2.9 percent, 4.2 percent and 5.9 percent. The slowdown has occurred at least in part because the Homewood schools have completed the undergraduate enrollment growth called for in the original five-year budget plan of 1989. This year's Homewood undergrads total 3,444, just 40 more than last year. "We're into a no-growth mode, certainly, in Arts and Sciences [as far as undergraduates are concerned]," said Robert J. Massa, dean of enrollment at Homewood. "Engineering has some plans to increase the number of undergraduates, but, for the most part, Homewood undergraduate enrollment will be stable." Massa said university-wide enrollment has grown every year at least since the early 1970s, when the Homewood schools began admitting undergraduate women. The addition of women, the planned increase in undergraduates in the early 1990s and the steady growth of part-time programs for adult students account for the steady upward trend. As usual, a slight majority--about 51 percent--of this year's enrollment is part-time students. Total Hopkins enrollment has grown nearly 17 percent since the fall 1990 semester, when the university had 14,033 students; in fall 1986, Hopkins enrolled 12,226 students. The fastest-growing component of enrollment in recent years is the Arts and Sciences part-time graduate program, which didn't exist until 1992 and now enrolls 803 students at Homewood and in Washington, D.C., and Montgomery County. The School of Nursing, which opened in 1984, began the 1990s with 186 students, 69 percent of them undergraduates. This year, the school has 526 students, a 183 percent increase in five years. Its enrollment is almost evenly split between undergrads and grad students.