College enrollment surged this fall in Winona, with Winona State University reporting a record number of students, Minnesota State College-Southeast Technical experiencing a 15 percent jump over last year and Saint Mary's University nearly matching last fall's record enrollment.

WSU tallied a record enrollment of 8,606 students during the official headcount taken on the 10th day of the fall semester. The school's second-largest-ever freshman class contributed to the jump, culled from 6,500 first-year student applications the school received before it stopped accepting them in March, said director of admissions Carl Stange.

The record tally also related to a 25 percent increase in students transferring to WSU - from 463 last fall to 579 this year. That increase may be related to a new provision that requires transfer students to come to the WSU campus for registration, increasing their ability to schedule the classes they need and interact with university staff, Stange said.

Southeast Tech's enrollment climbed to 2,462, up 320 from last fall. About 2,000 of those students take classes at the Winona campus. The jump is partly attributable to the economy, because laid-off workers are going back to school and younger people are putting a greater emphasis on education, said Nate Emerson, vice president of student affairs.

The increase has created challenges for the school, Emerson said. Southeast Tech built an overflow parking lot this year to accommodate the additional students, but some still park in the grass and near fences when the lot is full, he said. Teachers are also working more because of staff reductions in the past two years, he said.

Applications are already flooding in for the spring semester, and Emerson anticipates another jump. Officials may consider capping enrollment.

"We've looked at capping enrollment before, and we're at the point where we might have to look at that again," he said.

Enrollment declined slightly at Saint Mary's this fall, but was just nine students fewer than last year's record high. The economy may have had an impact on a freshman class that had nearly 75 fewer students than 2008, university officials said.

"Our sense was some families upfront were concerned with the cost," said Tom Mans, vice president for academic affairs.

One way the university adjusted was to increase the maximum number of credit hours students could take paying standard tuition, bumping it from 17 to 18 hours, he said. Many students have taken advantage, leading in part to students taking the largest-ever number of credits, he said.