CV NEWS FEED // Thomas Aquinas College, one of the fastest growing Catholic institutions of higher education in the country, announced on Tuesday, 28 October, its plan to boost enrollment by one-third for incoming freshmen at the New England campus.
At Thomas Aquinas College, each class is divided into “sections” of 16 to 19 students who will take their classes together. After next year, according to a press release from the college, the number of sections will rise to 4.
When the college first opened its New England campus in Northfield, Massachusetts in 2019, the freshmen class included two sections, but expanded to three in 2021.
President Paul J. O’Reilly stated in the College’s press release:
Ever since adding the New England campus five years ago, we have seen the number of applications continue to rise. The College has, therefore, decided to meet the increasing demand — to the extent prudently possible — by adding a fourth section to next year’s freshman class as well as to the classes that will follow.
The move is a part of the college’s larger plan to expand overall enrollment by more than 60 percent in the next four years.
“When you consider that each of the next four, enlarged freshman classes will replace smaller classes that graduated the year before, the expansion is quite dramatic,” Dr. O’Reilly continued. “We expect a net gain of around 100 students by the time next year’s freshmen become seniors.”
This will put the college in the position to grow its New England campus to approximately 280 students in four years, which is over five times the college’s enrollment in 2019. The “ultimate goal,” of the expansion plan, according to Dr. O’Reilly, is to educate “800 students per year, coast to coast.”
The number of applications at the California campus have also doubled since 2019, with the student population expanded by 25 percent, according to Director of Admissions Jon Daly.
“We were hopeful that the Northeast would be ripe for our program of Catholic liberal education, and we have been thrilled by the results so far,” said Daly.
