ASU released its annual report on Tuesday highlighting changes over the past year. The whole report is available online, but here are the top six things to take away from it.
ASU graduates are employed at a slightly higher rate than alumni of other universities and more than twice as likely to say they're thriving.
According to Gallup polls, only 80.8 percent of all alumni who graduated from 2003 onward are fully employed, meaning they're full-time employees, self-employed or are working part-time or not at all by their own choice. ASU is above the national average, with 83.8 percent of graduates from the same period reporting that they're fully employed. Perhaps more significantly, 7.8 percent of ASU graduates report "thriving" socially, physically, financially and with their community and purpose. Only 3.9 percent of graduates from peer universities report this.
ASU enrollment increased by 8.5 percent, hitting 83,301 students in fall 2014.
The University's international student enrollment soared, increasing by 32 percent from 6,709 to 8,051. The overwhelming majority of these students are from China, which sent 3,282 students to ASU in fall 2014. The next closest country, Brazil, sent 419 students. Kuwait, Qatar, Malaysia, the United Kingdom, Indonesia, Italy, Nigeria and Russia make up the rest of the top 10 countries with the highest numbers of international students at ASU.
ASU resident undergraduate tuition is more than $1,000 below the national average.
Base tuition and mandatory fees per semester for in-state undergraduates are about $10,000 a year. The national average is $11,505, with Penn State charging the most at $16,992 and Florida State charging the least at $6,507. This doesn't include room and board, books, meals or other expenses.
The ASU Foundation received nearly $150 million from donors.
The nonprofit foundation solicits donations for student scholarships and faculty support. Donations to Sun Devil Athletics also increased to $49 million from $8 million. The University received three high-profile athletics funding pledges in 2014: football coach Todd Graham and athletics director Ray Anderson both pledged $500,000 for Sun Devil Stadium renovations and hockey supporters Don and Chris Mullet donated $32 million for ASU's defending national champion club hockey team to move to the NCAA.
This year's freshman class was the University's largest and most diverse.
Almost 11,000 new freshmen from 50 states and 63 countries started at ASU in fall 2014. Slightly more than half are Arizona residents, and the majority (1,206) of the 1,647 new freshmen in Barrett, the Honors College are from the Grand Canyon State. The largest number of out-of-state students come from California, which fits with previous years' trends.
Reach the editor-in-chief at julia.shumway@asu.edu or follow @JMShumway on Twitter.
Like The State Press on Facebook and follow @statepress on Twitter
