Last Tuesday, Jan. 29, Interim SUNY Chancellor Dr. John B. Clark announced in a press release that student enrollment within the State University of New York (SUNY) system had increased, yet again, to 427,398 students, as of Fall 2007.
This 2.4 percent rise follows the same record-breaking pattern that the SUNY system has been experiencing since 1997 and 1998. Stony Brook University’s own enrollment history illustrates a similar pattern in total student enrollment growth.
According to data from SBU’s Office of Institutional Research, Fall 2007 enrollment added up to 23,351 students, an approximate increase of 3.67 percent from Fall 2006 figures.
In addition, there were 2,692 freshmen, 1,266 West Campus transfer students, and 113 Health Sciences Center (HSC) transfer students in 2007, who were all new full-time matriculated students.
The SUNY system is the nation’s largest comprehensive university system, with students in 7,669 degree and certificate programs on 64 campuses. Campuses include University Centers/Doctoral Degree Granting Institutions, such as SBU and Stony Brook Southampton, University Colleges, Community Colleges, and Technology Colleges.
The schools span the entire state of New York, from Plattsburgh in the north, to Fredonia in the west, to Downstate Medical Center in the south, and to Stony Brook Southampton in the east.
Minority enrollment has also risen 3.8 percent within SUNY since Fall 2006 to 85,023 students, which is almost 20 percent of the overall student enrollment. The press release stated that the black student population at SUNY totals 37,088 students, which is 8.7 percent of the total current enrollment and SUNY Hispanic student enrollment for Fall 2007 totals 26,702 students, which is 6.2 percent of the population. SUNY’s Asian/Pacific Islander student population represents 4.5 percent of the total enrollment or 19,172 students.
However, SBU’s minority student population is a little different than the entire SUNY system’s statistics.
Our campus is proven more diverse with 8 percent of undergraduate students identifying as African-American, 22 percent as Asian-American, and 8 percent as Hispanic-American in 2007 out of a total count of 15,367 undergraduate students.
Out of 7,788 graduate students in 2007, 5 percent identified as African-American, 8 percent as Asian-American, and 5 percent as Hispanic-American.
Overall, graduate students number 40,580 at SUNY, as of Fall 2007 and this is also a record number of graduate students within SUNY since 1949.
Furthermore, women make up 55.1 percent of the SUNY population, outnumbering men, with a population of 235,641 students.
As of Fall 2007, Stony Brook’s population is relatively equal among the genders in the undergraduate student pool, with 50 percent male and 50 percent female out of the 15,367 students. Of the 7,788 graduate students, 43 percent are male and 57 percent are female.
“High school graduates and their parents continue to recognize the outstanding value and high quality of a SUNY education,” Interim SUNY Chancellor Clark said in the press release. “Overall and minority student enrollment continue [to have] strong upward trends, indicating that SUNY campuses remain highly accessible and help to provide a more diverse population on our campuses.”
