After a difficult year for colleges and universities in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, the enrollment outlook for this fall is a lot brighter. Tulane University reported last week that 1,375 high-school seniors had committed to attending, a 56-percent jump over last year's 882 new freshmen. Xavier University of Louisiana reported that it had received 2,874 applications as of the first week of May, more than twice as many as this time last year. The University of New Orleans reported that as of May 1, applications were up about 7 percent, to 1,827. Dillard University, whose freshman applications are up about 30 percent, hopes to enroll 375 freshmen this fall, compared with 184 last fall and 150 the year before. Louisiana's higher-education commissioner, E. Joseph Savoie, said most New Orleans-area colleges were doing significantly better this year but were still expected to be below their pre-Katrina numbers this fall. Savoie said the process of rebuilding the state's public institutions had been "agonizingly slow," and that colleges had had a tough challenge recruiting students and faculty members at a time when the national news media were portraying "this image of a destroyed and dysfunctional city." Tulane's president, Scott S. Cowen, said in an interview last week that the increases in applications that Tulane and other local universities were seeing for the fall suggested "that people across the country are more confident about sending their sons and daughters to New Orleans."