此段文字中upwards的意思？

来源：百度知道 编辑：UC知道 时间：2024/06/30 22:04:02
某大学的英文介绍里有以下文字: The more than one thousand member faculty at SWPU boasts an Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, a nationally recognized State Outstanding Young and Middle-aged Expert, as well as fifty-four doctoral supervisors and almost seven hundred full professors and associate professors. The student body of SWPU is composed of more than nineteen thousand undergraduate and upwards of twenty-five hundred graduate students.
请问最后一句中的单词wards如何理解？

超过，多于

表示............不知道用中文怎么说
he student body of SWPU is composed of more than nineteen thousand undergraduate and upwards of twenty-five hundred graduate students.
它先说了有19,000undergraduate 就是19000个本科生, 然后说
upwards of twenty-five hundred graduate students---2500研究生
这个upwards有 从本科到研究生 '向上看', '向上走'的感觉