Record Enrollments Continue at Penn State Behrend
Enrollment at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College, now stands at 4,767 students for the fall 2009 semester, a new record and a 2.9 percent increase over the previous record set in fall 2008.
Penn State Behrend serves 4,400 students in resident instruction programs, according to official student census figures released by the University on Oct. 15. Of these, 4,031 are registered as full time and 369 as part time.
An additional 367 graduate students are served by the college through Penn State’s online World Campus as they pursue an intercollege Master of Business Administration degree or a certificate in Enterprise Resource Management.
Penn State Behrend is the largest Penn State campus outside of University Park. The college currently offers more than 40 degree programs, including 34 bachelor’s degrees, in four academic schools—Sam and Irene Black School of Business, School of Engineering, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, and School of Science—plus its nursing programs.
Enrollment was 4,633 students for the fall 2008 semester, a nearly 5 percent increase compared to fall 2007.
The college welcomed 1,060 new students as part of its fall 2009 first-year class, an increase over the fall 2008 total of 1,045 first-year students. Penn State Behrend has opted to control the size of its first-year class to maintain the college’s low student-to-faculty ratio and accommodate the increase in upper-class students who have chosen to complete their four-year Penn State degrees at Penn State Behrend.
Nearly 75 percent of those students who begin their college careers at Penn State Behrend and earn Penn State degrees, graduate from Penn State Behrend.
In addition, adult students and students of color account for 12 percent and 10 percent of the student body, respectively. Nine percent of Penn State Behrend students reside out-of-state.
University-wide, Penn State received more than 109,000 applications this year, an all-time record.