Graduate enrollment helps push total to nearly 30,000
Sept. 21, 2002
KALAMAZOO -- An increase in the number graduate students helped push Western Michigan University's fall enrollment total to an all-time record of 29,732, up 2.8 percent over the previous record set last year at 28,931.
The number of full-time graduate students increased to 3,168, up 6 percent over last year's figures, while the number of part-time graduate students was up 4.8 percent to 2,921. The largest increase came in the number of doctoral students, which increased to 623 from last fall's figure of 542, an increase of nearly 15 percent.
"The growth in our graduate enrollment, especially the 15 percent increase in the number of doctoral students, reflects the increasing national prominence of our graduate college and the growth in our graduate programming," said WMU President Elson S. Floyd. "It is a reflection of the strategic changes that we have made and the reputation that we are gaining across the nation."
Undergraduate enrollment reached 23,643, an increase of 2.1 percent over the fall 2001 figure of 23,156. Of this total, 4,543 were beginning freshmen, a decline of 2.7 percent when compared with last fall's figure of 4,669. This past spring, the University established a waiting list for freshmen for the first time in its history to keep the freshman class at an optimum size. The previous three years, the University closed admission to the freshman class in the spring for the same reason.
Media contact: Matt Kurz, 269 387-8400, matt.kurz@wmich.edu