BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) - After years of disappointing student enrollment, Southern University Chancellor James Llorens says he is optimistic that this year could be different.
Llorens says more than 820 potential first-time freshmen showed up to a recent summer orientation program, marking one of the better showings the Baton Rouge university has had in years.
By comparison, Southern enrolled 777 full-time freshmen last fall.
Enrollment has been a source of increasing concern on the Baton Rouge campus. The school peaked at around 10,000 students in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina before several consecutive years of free-falling student losses.