Canton's student numbers hit 3,361

Enrollment at SUNY Canton has set another record, with 3,361 registered students. That's a 10 percent increase over last year's all-time high of 3,056 students.

"To me, it's amazing. I had hoped to see this happen, but everything is ahead of schedule," college President Joseph L. Kennedy said. "Students this year for the most part have been on track to go where they wanted to go before the economy tanked, but we are definitely seeing some students choose us because we're a less-expensive alternative. More students also seem to be interested in having a job when they're done."

The freshman class accounts for much of the college's growth, with 972 students registered, a 20 percent increase over last year. The first-year class includes about 60 former General Motors and Alcoa employees from Massena, Mr. Kennedy said.

"We've had back-to-back extraordinary recruiting years accompanied by a steady growth of continuing and returning students. That has also allowed us to increase our selectivity, particularly in our most competitive programs," Director of Admissions Jonathan D. Kent said in a statement. "We denied nearly twice as many applicants this year than last year."

SUNY Canton OnLine also continues to attract students both on campus and abroad, with 428 people registered to take Web courses this fall. About 300 of those online students hail from the American University in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

SUNY Canton OL accounts for 12.7 percent of the college's total enrollment.

Overall, enrollment at the college has increased more than 60 percent in the past decade, Mr. Kennedy said. Before last year, SUNY Canton's record enrollment was 2,833 students — in 1975-76.

"We're hoping in the next couple years to have 3,200 to 3,500 students on campus," Mr. Ken-nedy said. "Any growth beyond that will have to be online, because we'll be pretty maxed out."

The swift growth in enrollment has increased college revenue in a tough economic year and will help as SUNY Canton faces more state budget cuts from Albany, Mr. Kennedy said.

"I think we will be short about $2 million this year, but we have generated our own revenue to that number," he said. "The recession has certainly made all of us who run colleges be better businesspeople."

Clarkson University, Potsdam, also is welcoming more students to campus this fall. The college has a larger-than-usual first-year class, with about 740 freshmen, up 30 percent from 2008-09. Nearly 100 transfer students also are joining Clarkson this year.

"Certainly parents are tuned in to what the hot careers are, and we're fortunate that the world needs engineers and businesses and scientists, because that's what we produce every day," Clarkson's Director of Admissions Brian T. Grant said. "I like to say we're kind of the right school at the right time."

The freshman class also is more diverse than usual, with students of color representing 13 percent of the class and women making up about 28 percent, Mr. Grant said.

"We've realized that 740 students really is sort of our ideal number for a class. We don't want to get much bigger than that," he said.

While Clarkson's total enrollment numbers are still being formulated for the semester, the university has about 3,000 undergraduate and graduate students, according to spokesman Michael P. Griffin.

SUNY Potsdam and St. Lawrence University, Canton, both are on track to have about the same number of registered students this year as last year.

As of Friday, there were 4,322 undergraduates and graduate students enrolled at SUNY Potsdam, 828 of whom were freshmen, spokeswoman Deidre L. Kelly said. There are 351 transfer students this year.

Overall, there are only 2 percent more students on campus this fall compared with last year at this time, Ms. Kelly said.

SLU had 2,279 full-time undergraduate students as of Friday. Since graduate students are still registering for classes, the university won't know its total enrollment for a couple of weeks, spokeswoman Macreena A. Doyle said. SLU's class of 2013 has 585 students.

"We have not planned for our enrollment to grow significantly, because we are a residential institution and class size is very important to us," Ms. Doyle said. "This is the size that we want to be."