“Our enrollment for winter matches last year,” says Washtenaw Community College VP Evan Montague. “Our peer institutions are down. We feel really good about sustaining that enrollment.”
Holding steady in good times is a sure sign of success in the community college business. When unemployment is high, enrollment goes up because workers are back at school retooling–but when times are good, people have jobs and enrollment goes down. WCC’s head count climbed 16 percent between 2005 and 2010–only to drop back 13 percent by 2014.
Relatively speaking, that’s good news: the state’s overall community college enrollment fell 18 percent in the same period. And while WCC’s enrollment is holding steady at around 12,000 students, notes college spokesperson Susan Ferraro, statewide schools saw “an average head count enrollment decline of 5.18 percent for fall and 4.3 percent for winter.”
How did WCC do it? Ferraro credits “multiple initiatives” by “WCC’s highly dedicated and committed faculty and staff.” Most impressively, faculty, deans, and staff made hundreds of phone calls to current and prospective students to help them enroll. “We did it for the first time this last summer on a voluntary basis across the campus,” says Montague. “It was a real push!”
Other changes include more flexible course schedules and expanded online offerings. Montague says that for the fall semester, online credit hours were up 26 percent over fall 2014–gains that came even as WCC’s trustees increased tuition for distance learning by $3 per credit hour for in-county residents. They raised tuition only $1 a credit hour for on-campus classes–and froze it for students who enrolled early for the fall semester.
