(The Center Square) – Medical programs at Louisiana’s public colleges are steadily gaining students while law, dentistry and pharmacy programs face mixed or declining enrollment, according to a new report from the Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana.
Across the six public higher education institutions that train new doctors, lawyers, dentists and pharmacists, Louisiana enrolled an average of about 3,200 students annually over the past decade. Nursing, occupational therapy and dental hygiene were not included in PAR’s analysis.
In the most recent academic year, roughly 3,400 students attended one of those public professional schools. The figures exclude private programs such as Tulane’s medical school, Loyola New Orleans’ law school and Xavier’s pharmacy school.
Overall, the decline in professional-degree seekers mirrors broader national and regional drops in college enrollment. At the same time, Louisiana’s two public medical schools have steadily expanded their classes and, in 2024, surpassed total law school enrollment for the first time since 2019.
After several years of rapid growth, the state’s two public law schools topped out at 1,537 students in 2022-23 and have fallen since then. The Southern University Law Center hit a nine-year high of 931 students in 2022 but has dropped to 796, a loss of 135 students over two years. LSU’s Paul M. Hebert Law Center has trended in the opposite direction, adding about 15 students per year on average since 2017. The combined total, however, is down from the 2022-23 peak.
LSU’s medical programs have grown gradually over the past decade, with the biggest jump in 2024—the year medical enrollment pulled ahead of law again. New Orleans continues to enroll more medical students than LSU Health Shreveport, but the gap has narrowed significantly: from about 300 students 10 years ago to 188 in 2024.
LSU’s dental school has largely kept enrollment steady, incrementally adding students and averaging about 280 admitted each year over the past decade.
The University of Louisiana at Monroe runs the state’s only public pharmacy program. Its enrollment has declined for most of the past decade, including a loss of nearly 90 students since 2021.
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Professional schools supply much of Louisiana’s future workforce in health care and the justice system. Growth on the medical side could help ease provider shortages, while continued declines in pharmacy and the pullback in law enrollment may affect pipelines into those fields.
The snapshot focuses on four programs.