Facing a large influx of student interest amid stricter regulation on state appropriations, Florida Gulf Coast University has moved to slow the growth of its enrollment, signaling a change in how the burgeoning public university in Southwest Florida chooses to admit students and seek funding.

The university’s Board of Trustees at its last meeting approved a motion that calls for a full-time undergraduate enrollment of about 1,500 fewer students than originally was planned by the 2019-20 academic year.

The FGCU student population still will be growing, but at a slower rate than previously projected. The board cut the university’s planned annual growth rate by more than half, from 4.8 percent to 2.25 percent, for all students during the next five years.

The move is one of a series of decisions the university has made recently as part of its strategy to turn a dramatic uptick in student interest into an enhanced academic profile. The benefits of such a result, officials say, are wide-reaching. Among the advantages, it would increase the propensity of alumni to donate and further solidify FGCU’s footprint in Southwest Florida.

An important step to getting there, the university believes, is a greater emphasis on the quality of its incoming students.

“What you’re beginning to see is our roots are not spreading wide — as would characterize the university some years ago — they’re going deep,” FGCU President Wilson Bradshaw said. “All of these things are happening now — the excitement has shifted from the spreading of roots, to the roots going deeper.”

FGCU is enjoying a great deal of momentum following the success of the men’s basketball team in the 2013 NCAA tournament. The national exposure from the Eagles’ run to the Sweet Sixteen helped cause a 27 percent increase in freshman applications and allowed the university’s fundraising office to double its number of alumni donors in a year.

Even before the NCAA tournament run, FGCU often has seen large increases in student population since the university first held class in 1997. Total enrollment has more than doubled in the past 10 years to about 14,000 this year. The university received 13,773 freshman applications in 2014, about 3,000 more than last year.

The increased student interest, combined with multimillion dollar decreases in state funding every year from 2008-12, caused the university increasingly to rely on tuition money to fund its budget. Tuition revenue has risen 34 percent during the past five years (although, Bradshaw is quick to say, tuition rates have been flat for two years). Overall, tuition makes up about a quarter of FGCU’s revenue in its 2014-15 operating budget, up from about 18 percent before the recession.

But modifications made in January to the state’s public education appropriation model have led to what FGCU calls an “increased emphasis” on performance-based funding. Now, public universities are eligible to receive tens of millions of dollars in state money if their reported numbers adhere to the state’s academic metrics, which are based on criteria such as student retention rates and post-college employment data.

FGCU was allocated to receive $8.1 million in performance-based funding for the 2014-15 year. For universities with better metrics — the University of Florida, for instance —the number was close to $40 million.

The model creates an incentive for FGCU to cut back on its rampant growth and implement stricter admission standards. It means that for public universities seeking state funding in Florida, bigger isn’t always better.

“If you have a student with a stronger academic profile, it’s very likely that you’re going to retain that student,” Bradshaw said, adding that freshman SAT scores are likely to rise. “It’s very likely that student is going to graduate in four years. Those are at least two metrics that contribute to our funding.”

FGCU’s new growth plan also underlies the university’s desire to emphasize sources of funding other than tuition money. As part of that effort, FGCU recently announced a $100 million fundraising initiative, one of the largest such campaigns in the university’s short history.

Christopher Simoneau, vice president for university advancement, said the exposure of the FGCU men’s basketball team largely helps make the effort possible.

“After the Sweet Sixteen run, people are proud of their institution,” Simoneau said. “People outside the region wear their colors and are recognized in D.C. and Chicago and New York and Boston, and they’re proud of that and they want to give back.”

The fundraising campaign has set a three-year goal of 2017, to coincide with FGCU’s 20-year anniversary.

“There are threshold periods in young university’s lives,” Bradshaw said. “The 20th anniversary is one of them. I think we’re fortunate to have the success of our athletics program, especially men’s basketball, be a prelude to that.”

For his part, Bradshaw was careful to draw a line between the future of his university and the state’s larger public universities. The momentum FGCU is enjoying won’t detract it from its academic mission, Bradshaw said.

Still, the growth of FGCU has shown itself in other, less desirable ways.

Average undergraduate class sizes have increased from 24 in 2003 to 35 in 2013. Ronald Toll, provost and vice president for academic affairs, said the university doesn’t want the number to grow any larger than 37, which would keep it around the average of other public universities in Florida.

“Is 36 too large?” Toll said. “Well, is there a difference between 32 and 36? I would say no.”

To alleviate space issues, the university relies on online courses, which has raised some concern among the student body. “Rise in Virtual Classes,” was the headline of a recent point-counterpoint in the Eagle News, the student newspaper. Sixteen percent of all classes this fall semester are online courses, and 54 percent of students this semester are enrolled in at least one online course.

Domenic Volpi, the student body president who is also a fifth-year senior, said he takes one to two online classes per semester.

“I personally like online classes,” Volpi said. “I learn at my own pace and it lets you do that.”

Kelli Krebs, a junior journalism major and Eagle News editor, said she’s taken four online courses. The growth on campus, she said, has “definitely” been noticeable.

“People really want to be able to compete with schools like (the University of Florida) and (Florida State University). A lot of people want that,” Krebs said. “A lot of people want the FGCU that they signed up for. We’re pretty divided when it comes to that.”