Higher ed enrollments at local campuses inch up

Larger classes graduating from Colorado high schools mixed with an uncertain economy the last couple years has meant more students enrolling at Northern Colorado’s public colleges and universities.
The only exception is Aims Community College, which saw a decrease in enrollment this fall due largely to its switch from the quarter system to semester system. Mark Olson, director of public relations for Aims, said national research shows that schools that make the switch lose as much as 20 percent in student population the first year.
“Fortunately, we are only down between 8 and 10 percent,” he said. “In a positive way, we beat the odds. We’re not doing as badly as we anticipated.”
The upside, Olson said, is that enrollment begins to increase in the second year and years following and surpass enrollment numbers from when the school was on the quarter system.
The initial drop, he explained, could be because schools on semesters begin in August as opposed to September and students are not accustomed to the earlier start date. Or it could be because students choose not make the switch in fear of losing credits, which Olson said, “is not true.”
That said, total head count is 4,805 students at Aims’ three campuses in Greeley, Fort Lupton and Loveland. Of those, 70 percent are part-time. An additional 2,500 students are enrolled in non-credit offerings through Continuing Education. Seventy-nine percent attend class in Greeley. The others are split evenly between the other two campuses.
As the workplace is changing, so are educational offerings at Aims. Olson said health sciences, which include the allied health fields such as licensed practical nursing and radiological services, is huge.
“Many of our classes are packed. It’s really a crisis employment area.” Up to 400 students are enrolled in classes, but the drawback is difficulty in finding internships for students at area medical facilities. Aims is considering enrollment caps to ensure students who do enroll will have the opportunity to intern.
Other strong areas include business, communication, construction management, criminal justice, early childhood education, emergency medical services, engineering, fire science and computers, though the latter has tapered off from previous years.
Front Range Community College, with its Larimer Campus in Fort Collins, shows a 6.5 percent increase over the previous year, or an additional 311 students. Fall 2004 enrollment at the Larimer Campus is 5,072, according to Laura Jensen, assistant director of institutional research. Campuswide, FRCC has 15,362 students, or a 2.3 percent increase.
Courses with the highest full-time equivalency are math, English, biology, nursing and psychology.
At the four-year university level, both the University of Northern Colorado and Colorado State University report higher enrollment numbers for 2004. UNC has 12,061 students, a 3.8 increase over 2003. CSU’s head count is 25,382, an increase of 340 students, or 1.3 percent.
Linda Luk, vice president for student affairs and dean of admissions at CSU, said the university intends to keep enrollment from growing too much because resources are unavailable to expand program offerings to meet that need.
CSU, like UNC, has had to put stiffer admission standards in place for highly desirable programs. At CSU, those include business, journalism, art, mechanical engineering and construction management. Agriculture and natural resources are two areas actively seeking more students, Luk said.
“We don’t have the resources to hire the faculty that we would need to produce the kind of courses, etc., that we would need to increase (enrollment) dramatically,” she said.
Enrollment from graduates of Colorado high schools is expected to increase until 2008 and 2009. “We have four more years of increasing pressure (by students) to get into certain programs.”
Out-of-state students make up 20 percent of the student body. “It has gone down,” Luk said, “due to the economy.” Out-of-state undergraduate tuition is $14,347 per semester, compared to $3,760 for in-state.
In Greeley, UNC is coping with its largest freshman class ever. “We thought it would be closer to last year’s, but we ended up with as many as 200 more than we really expected,´ said Tom Gavin, assistant vice president for enrollment management.
Gavin said changes in admission standards allowed the university to admit a few more students than in previous years.
But what it came down to, he said, is students comparing costs and program quality of in-state and out-of-state schools and opting to save money by staying in state.
“The economy is having an affect,” Gavin said. “The cost of everything is going up and students are looking at staying closer to home.”
Higher numbers of high school students graduating also account for the overall higher enrollment numbers statewide. But UNC is also seeing a higher number of minority students. That, he said, is a reflection of more minority students graduating from high school and the university’s recruitment efforts to get them into the applicant pool.
Gavin said minority numbers have increased to 18 percent from 14 percent a year ago, an increase of 130 students. “We saw increases in every one of the minority categories. As much as anything, it appears that they are persisting through high graduation and seeing college as an opportunity.”
One of the challenges in higher education in all locales, Gavin said, is to balance enrollment and maintain quality of programs with “uncertain state support. We have been limited to what to do with tuition. We don’t want to price it too high to limit access.” In-state tuition at UNC is $2,850 per semester for undergraduates while out-of-state tuition is $12,520.”
And, he added, you can’t maintain a quality program if you can’t hire full-time faculty. “It’s hard to build a long-term program around part-time folks.”
UNC’s strongest programs include nursing, performing arts, business and education.