News Highlights

Enrollment here is up; many other schools are down

Countering trend, enrollment here is up; other schools are lower.

2011-10-14
By Tim Krohn, Free Press staff writer [published in The Free Press, Mankato, MN, 10/14/2011]

Minnesota State Mankato is one of a handful of state col­leges and universities to see its enrollment grow.

The university has slightly fewer students on campus than St. Cloud State University, but it is expected to sur­pass SCSU in the number of credit hours taken by all students.

Minnesota State Mankato has 15,649 stu­dents, according to official figures released by the Minnesota State Colleges & Universities system Thursday.

That is a 1.7 percent increase over last year.

“The important thing is that our enrollment is increasing in the face of declining high school grad­uating classes,” said Michael Cooper, director of media relations at Minnesota State Mankato.

This past year, there were fewer high school graduates in the state than the year before, a trend that is to continue for sev­eral more years.

Virtually all of the state’s two- year colleges saw a decline while about half of state universities saw a drop in student numbers.

St. Cloud State still ranks as hav­ing the most students — 17,231 — which is a decline of 5.9 percent.

But when looking at “ full year equivalent” num­bers, Minnesota State Mankato is the largest campus in the system. The full year equivalent enroll­ment takes all of the credit hours to be taken by all the students on a campus and then divides it by the num­ber of credits that would be taken by a full- time stu­dent.

Minnesota State Mankato is projected to have a 14,525 full-year equivalent enrollment over this academic year, while St. Cloud State will have 14,051.

Systemwide, there were 200,716 students enrolled, down 203,738 from last fall.

For the complete Free Press story, see Friday's print edition of The Free Press, or go to the e-edition at http://mankatofreepress.mn.newsmemory.com/.

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