Those who believe in strength in numbers might go into a panic when they see that UF is not the state's largest university.
The university's enrollment rate has remained constant since 2006, while other universities in the state have grown.
The University of Central Florida, for example, has first-day enrollment numbers topping 56,000 students.
Florida's numbers have held steady at nearly 48,700, according to UF spokesman Steve Orlando.
But Orlando said the UF administration isn't getting too worked up over the numbers gap.
"We're not in a competition to be the biggest," he said. "We're interested in quality, not quantity."
UF's current goal is to provide the best educational experience possible, Orlando said.
A couple of the ways to do that, he said, are to decrease class sizes and maintain the university's student-faculty ratio.
Facing budget cuts in 2009, the university had to cut down on faculty. In order to preserve the ratio, the university cut down on enrollment, as well.
For two years, the university made concerted efforts to decrease undergraduate enrollment at the university while increasing graduate-student enrollment.
"If you believe the faculty-student ratio is important, and you can't hire more faculty, the only other way to impact that is to take less students," said UF President Bernie Machen. "We didn't have the resources to educate as many students as we had."
The university has stopped cutting down on students and instead is trying to keep a steady enrollment level as opposed to growing or shrinking, Orlando said.
"The original plan that I announced was a four-year plan," Machen said. "And we were going to go down significantly, by about 4,000. We stopped it after two years. Basically, we felt like we had our budget under control, and frankly, I couldn't afford to lose any more tuition money. ... So this year's freshman class, if we did it right, should be almost the same as last year's freshman class."
And it is. The freshman class this year is 6,400 strong.
Last year's freshman class had about 6,300 students, according to Orlando.
Over the past 20 years, UF total enrollment has grown by about 13,000, according to the UF website.
The growth gave the university the reputation of being one of the largest in the U.S.
"Our goal was never to be the biggest," Orlando said. "We simply were."
In the coming years, UF will be focusing on bringing in students through distance learning or online programs, he said.
If that is the case, the university may bring in more students, but the enrollment numbers won't grow.
According to Andy McCollough, the associate provost for e-learning and distance education, online students are not counted in the enrollment statistics.
"Everyone talks about UF having 50,000 students," Machen said. "We're really closer to 48,000. And hopefully, the resources are the same, so the students that are here can still have access to the resources."
