By David Hurtado
It’s the first day of school and the numbers are in. 16,073 students are enrolled at the college as of August 20, according to MargE Shelley, assistant dean of Enrollment, a six percent decrease from last year.
Although the numbers are down from previous years, Dennis Day, vice president, Student Success, said this trend is not specific to the college alone. He said as the economy slowly gets back on its feet, less people are seeking higher education.
“The national trend right now with the economy being in a better shape than it was, less people will go to higher education,” Day said. “Because, during really bad times, they either go for re-training or a place to go to because they don’t have jobs and they can get financial aid; we had a big spike in financial aid during that time period.”
According to data from the National Student Clearinghouse, two-year public institutions like the college experienced a two to three percent drop in enrollment during the last three years. As the economy is slowing recovering from the 2008 recession, colleges across the board are experiencing enrollment drops.
Many people point to the improving economy for decreasing enrollment at the college, but others think the enrolling process is cumbersome and confusing due to a lack of clear directions around campus and, at times, irregular counseling office hours.
Despite misgivings toward the enrollment process, the college has made efforts to make enrolling easier for students. Recently, for the duration of late enrollment, a podium has been placed near the Student Services Desk and additional signs have been set up to direct students around campus quicker.
Anna Strickland, student, Student Services, said during the enrollment period, typically 150 people will come to the Student Services desk with questions on a given day. She said most of these are simple questions, asking where the restroom or Financial Aid Office can be found.
“I have seen people being helped at the podium at the front,” Strickland said. “I think it has done a lot, because they actually see somebody to talk to.”
In addition to the rebranding efforts, Day said the college’s marketing group has been discussing different strategies in the past few months for attracting students to the college. He said there are three age groups of students they focus on: 17 to 21 year olds, 24 to 29 year olds and 30 to 39 year olds.
The college’s policy toward late enrollment has also received criticism in the case of students not able to enroll right away due to personal or financial reasons. Students who wish to enroll in a course must do so prior to the first day the class meets.
Once the class has begun enrollment is closed, and only courses that start later in the semester are still open. This is the third year the late registration policy has been in effect.
Day said he believes the college provides ample opportunities for students to get into courses two weeks after the initial start of classes. Day added he doesn’t believe late registration has much effect on overall enrollment.
“We provide an opportunity for people to get in the classes two weeks after the initial start of classes,” Day said. “I think the bigger issue there has nothing to do with open enrollment, but it has to do with being able to change your classes more freely and we kind of restrict that by having no late enrollment.”
Jeff Anderson, counselor, said the Counseling Center has not experienced a decline in the number of students asking for help, even though enrollment is down this semester. For the past three weeks, the center has rolled out what they call “Advising Express,” an approach that helps counselors with peak time student demand.
According to Anderson, during Advising Express, 3,309 walk-in students were assisted with enrollment, not counting IM’s, appointments, or students helped at the Quick Question Desk. However, he said the operation had to be moved up to the third floor of the COM building because of a lack of space, in part because the college does not have a good facility on campus to handle enrollment.
“The intent of the Advising Express upstairs process was supposed to be like a quick turnaround,” he said. “The problem with that is the students who came in this last month of the process are the ones who have issues that are very complicated and they tend to take a lot more time. As a result it kind of slows down what’s supposed to be a quick process to a very drawn out process.”
Advising Express begins three weeks prior to the start of classes and has been an important tool in Counseling’s approach to enrollment for many years now. Anderson said about 1/3 of students typically wait until the last month to enroll, and the AE approach greatly helps dealing with so many students in a short time span.
On average, a counselor typically sees between 8 and 10 students a day, if not more. The number of counselors on hand per day varies, as not every counselor is full time, and some teach classes in addition to counseling.
Anderson said he personally has not heard any complaints when meeting with students, but said he would be naïve to think there weren’t any. Overall, Anderson said he believed there are things that can be done to make the process smoother for students, like communicating to students earlier in the summertime.
“One thing that could improve was if we had a space on campus, a central location that was dedicated to registration so that we’re not up here in the obscure reaches of Commons 319 doing this thing,” Anderson said. “If there was some dedicated space for registration, I think that would be great.”
Due to this limitation, the scope of operation has been affected, according to Anderson.
“As it’s turned out, we’ve just been pressed for space,” Anderson and we’ve had to farm stuff outside of our area.
Contact David Hurtado, features editor, at dhurtado@jccc.edu.