This fall, enrollment at the University reached its high water mark in school history, spurred in part by an augmented acceptance rate, which is now at 50 percent, according to data released by the University today. The data also showed that the number of underrepresented minority students enrolling at the University declined for the fourth straight year.

Enrollment totaled 41,674 students for the fall 2009 semester, according to numbers released this morning by the University Office of the Registrar. There are 26,208 undergraduates and 15,466 graduate students on campus this fall.

Ted Spencer, associate vice provost and executive director of the University’s admissions office, said the increase in overall enrollment is due to a number of factors, like the anticipation of a large number of students graduating this year and a substantial number of students not returning to the University this year because of financial constraints.

“These kinds of fluctuations happen throughout any given year, with effect to overall target changes,” Spencer said.

He added that these types of changes contributed to the admissions office’s decision to increase the size of the incoming class this year.

Admission offers were up more than 19 percent from last year, according to a press release from the University News Service. The University’s acceptance rate of 50 percent this year was an 8-percent increase from last year, Spencer said.

University officials were concerned about the University’s ability to accommodate the increase in students, but ultimately concluded that there would be enough facilities and staff to support the growth, Spencer said.

While overall freshmen enrollment is up 5.1 percent over last year — totaling 6,079 students — underrepresented minority freshmen enrollment was down 11.4 percent from last year, according to the report.

This decrease represents a loss of 69 underrepresented minority students — from 604 last year to 535 this year. As a percentage of the incoming freshman class, underrepresented minority students fell from making up 10.4 percent of the fall 2008 class to making up 9.1 percent of the fall 2009 freshmen class.

Since the passage of a statewide constitutional amendment in 2006 banning public institutions from using affirmative action as a factor in admissions, the number of underrepresented minority students at the University has declined every year.

Spencer said the University is concerned with this decrease and is making efforts to prevent a further decline in minority numbers through outreach programs.

“We certainly are concerned about this, and we made every effort possible to both identify young students who are underrepresented to encourage them to apply and then encourage them to enroll,” Spencer said.

Though the number of underrepresented minority students who chose to enroll was down this year, the number of underrepresented minority students who applied to the University and the number of those students accepted increased during this past admissions cycle, Spencer said.