NEW ORLEANS – For the first day of school, Alissa Bigger was in an upbeat mood.

Hurricane Katrina closed several major New Orleans colleges last semester, but the start of classes Tuesday at Tulane, Xavier and Southern Universities marked a welcome return to routine.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited about the first day of school. I’m so happy just to be back,” said Bigger, a Tulane sophomore. “It’s proving there’s hope for the city. If the school can run, we can go back to doing normal things.”

None of the colleges are fully up to speed, and it could be years before all are back to their former size. But with their energy, optimism and free-spending ways, college students could be just what this struggling city needs right now.

“Most of you have returned at a time when many would have stayed away,” jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis said Monday night at an event on Tulane’s campus welcoming back the city’s students, before playing a set with a band that included his pianist father, Ellis.

“And now that you are here, you have the opportunity to set a new tone, not only a new tone for New Orleans, but … a new tone for our nation.”

Gov. Kathleen Blanco told the students their return was a boost for the city, and asked them to commit their summers to helping rebuild the state.

The colleges in the city have plenty of problems of their own. Many classes will be held in trailers and hotel conference rooms while they continue to repair campus damage, and overall enrollment is lower than before the storm.

Universities continue to repair of hundreds of millions of dollars of campus damage, and overall enrollment is considerably lower than before the storm. They laid off hundreds of faculty and staff to meet budgets.

Tulane senior Clay Kirby will be able to graduate but was set to protest cuts in his university’s engineering program.

“I love Tulane, and this decision is going to hurt Tulane,” said Kirby, whose family has sent four generations of students to the school.