|
|
 |
 |
Inside Higher Education
Enrollment Declines,
Transfer Barriers: Community College Presidents’ Survey
Six in 10 leaders of community colleges say their enrollments have
declined in the past three years, including 21 percent who say
enrollment is down by 10 percent or more, according to Inside Higher
Ed’s 2017 Survey of Community College Presidents.
The survey, conducted by Gallup, is based on responses from 236 leaders
of two-year colleges, who were queried about recruitment, the future of
free community college and the emerging talent pool for new presidents,
among other topics.
Although most presidents said their institutions have seen decreases in
enrollment, 18 percent reported an increase compared to three years ago.
More About the Survey
Inside Higher Ed’s 2017 Survey of Community College Presidents was
conducted in conjunction with Gallup. A copy of the report can be
downloaded here.
Inside Higher Ed regularly surveys key higher ed professionals on a
range of topics.
On May 10 at 2 p.m. Eastern, Inside Higher Ed editors Scott Jaschik and
Doug Lederman will present a free webinar on the results and take your
questions. Sign up here.
The Inside Higher Ed survey of presidents was made possible in part by
advertising from Ellucian, InsideTrack, Jenzabar, Pearson and
VitalSource.
Many of these community college leaders say they’re focused on
recruiting students and offering new programs.
Asked what steps they were taking to recruit more students, adding new
campus programs drew the most response (81 percent), followed by adding
options to ease student transfer (72 percent), increasing marketing
spending (65 percent) and adding online programs (62 percent). Far
fewer (38 percent) said they were freezing or cutting tuition.
Presidents who said their institutions had stable or increasing
enrollment were more likely than their peers (48 percent to 34 percent)
to say they were keeping tuition level or cutting it.
On the Campuses
At Michigan’s St. Clair County Community College, President Deborah
Snyder has seen enrollment fall from about 5,200 in 2009 to about 3,700
this year. Some of that is due to the economy stabilizing and people
preferring work to a classroom, but there are other reasons, she said.
“Community colleges by and large in the past have just figured that
they’re going to draw from the community in which they reside,” she
said. “What community colleges do is look at demographic numbers and
project how many students they’ll get based on how many are graduating
[high school]. But as the high school graduation number goes down, it’s
no surprise our numbers are going down, too.”
Last year, the college began to boost recruitment in the area’s high
schools by reaching out to counselors and making presentations to the
traditional-age population, she said.
The college also decided to increase the number of sports offered to
encourage more recent high school graduates to consider St. Clair as an
option. The majority of students at the college are recent high school
graduates. About 25 percent of St. Clair students are nontraditional.
“We’re adding sports and we built a big, beautiful field house,” Snyder
said. “There are students who would come here if they thought there
would be a real college experience. We’re trying to entice those
students who maybe would be attracted to a four-year institution to
come here first, and for parents the draw is financial. We’re saying
you can save a lot of money coming to a community college for two
years.”
St. Clair already offered athletics programs in men’s and women’s
basketball, baseball, softball, volleyball and golf. But last year
college officials added men’s and women’s cross country, and this fall
men’s and women’s bowling and wrestling will be added to the list, said
Pete Lacey, St. Clair’s vice president of student services. Tennis and
women’s soccer are under consideration for the future.
Lacey said the college’s administrators are budget conscious and
recognize their sports programs aren’t lucrative, but they’re
optimistic the additional enrollment will offset any increases in cost.
Despite decreases in the number of high school graduates in the region,
St. Clair is also seeing a boost from high school students taking dual
credit courses at the institution. About 25 percent of St. Clair
students, or about 1,000 students, are pursuing college credits while
they’re in high school.
The Trouble With Transfer
The presidents’ focus on transfer appears to embrace cooperation over
competition with other institutions.
“It’s so competitive,” said Snyder of St. Clair. “We’re not only
competing with other community colleges [for enrollment], but we’re
competing with online, state institutions and private institutions. I’d
rather collaborate with them and work on articulation agreements than
compete with the University of Michigan.”
Transfer does not always go smoothly, though, and far fewer students
move to four-year institutions than initially say they plan to. Asked
to rate the most significant barriers to transfer, 44 percent of
two-year-college presidents cited as a “very significant” factor the
lack of clear pathways to ensure the transfer of academic credit,
followed by a lack of clear interest from public four-year colleges in
supporting transfer students (26 percent) and in accepting such
students (23 percent). Public colleges were rated more negatively on
those counts than were private four-year institutions.
Transfer between Connecticut’s community colleges, the state’s regional
public universities and the University of Connecticut has improved
significantly over the years.
Manchester Community College’s students, for instance, are guaranteed
admission to UConn if they meet a certain set of criteria, and
legislation was passed a couple of years ago establishing seamless
transfer and guided pathways for the state’s two-year students to about
20 programs in Connecticut’s four-year college and university system.
But problems may still arise, President Gena Glickman said, adding that
it’s not uncommon for students to still lose credits when transferring
or find they don’t have the right prerequisite courses to transfer
despite articulation and seamless transfer agreements.
“It starts with the institution,” she said, adding that colleges have
to clearly show students the program pathways they’ve created to ease
transfer to four-year institutions, but it's also the responsibility of
students to take advantage of those pathways.
Glickman said it’s her goal to eventually have an academic coach
assigned to every one of her students at Manchester. Although that
hasn’t happened yet, the college has been able to provide a coach for
students on academic probation to help guide them through these choices.
Presidents’ Biggest Challenges
Asked to assess the significance of the challenges they face, money and
enrollment topped the list.
Eighty percent called financial matters a “big challenge,” followed by
enrollment management (74 percent), and politics and public safety (52
percent). Personnel, competition and academic matters lagged.
The Presidential Pipeline
Beyond the challenges community college presidents are facing on their
campuses, many leaders who responded to the survey said they are
concerned about the future of their profession. Community college
presidents were divided on the quality of the talent pool available to
fill leadership positions like theirs.
Just 29 percent said they were impressed with the field of potential
two-year leaders.
But Josh Wyner, executive director of the Aspen Institute’s College
Excellence Program, said he’s not surprised that current presidents
seem pessimistic about the talent pool for their profession. The Aspen
Institute, which focuses on driving leadership to solve problems, also
runs a fellowship to prepare aspiring or recently appointed community
college presidents.
“There are a lot of very experienced presidents out there, [and] as
people get more experienced and they look at the folks coming up behind
them, they’re less certain those people are qualified,” he said, adding
that the average age of presidents has increased by a decade in the
last 20 years.
Seventy-seven percent of respondents to the Inside Higher Ed survey are
between the ages of 50 and 69.
“The world in which community college leaders practice is changing
fast,” Wyner said. “The complexity of the job makes it harder and
harder to be prepared for the presidency.”
Wyner said today’s presidents are finding political discourse on their
campuses becoming more difficult as the country divides along partisan
lines, but they’re also facing an inability to control social media or
messages during crisis moments and difficulties in lobbying for funding
and state-based grants and appropriations.
“The expectations of all of the authorities that oversee community
colleges are ramping up, and the demographics of communities are
changing so more underprepared students are entering community
colleges,” he said. “Being prepared in an environment where you’re
asked to do more with less resources for a more diverse population is
hard, and it’s hard to imagine people being prepared for that.”
Aspen recently completed its first fellowship for aspiring or new
community college presidents. The highly selective yearlong program not
only works to better prepare two-year leaders, but to also increase
diversity in the field. Presidents surveyed said they were split on
whether there are clear paths to the presidency, with 43 percent saying
there aren’t.
The community college presidents surveyed said they were more
pessimistic about there being a pool of qualified minority candidates
than they were about the pool of qualified women candidates.
Aspen’s second-year fellowship class is made up of 68 percent women and
35 percent people of color, including 15 percent who identify as
African-American, compared to 7 percent of sitting presidents. Ten
percent are Latino, compared to 5 percent of sitting presidents, Wyner
said.
“If sitting presidents believe they’re not seeing adequate talent in
the pipeline and underrepresented minorities and women aren’t in the
pipeline or in the presidency, then we have a lot of work to do with
those groups so they’re prepared,” he said. “It’s about preparation and
making sure our selection processes are equitable and fully consider
the wide range of candidates.”
The Environment for Free Community College
Two-year-college leaders were also asked about how the changes in the
national political landscape would affect the high-profile issue of
free community college, like the plan President Obama suggested two
years ago.
A majority of community college presidents -- 58 percent -- said there
is very little chance of federal support for such a program, but that
local initiatives like those in New York and California are likely to
grow.
Forty-one percent of community college presidents said the idea is
unlikely to spread at all.
Only 1 percent said they expected the idea to win continued federal
support under President Trump.
Editor Note: Edison State Community College enrollment is, and has been, climbing.
|
|
|
|
