Parkland, DACC both seeing increase in enrollment
A bad economy has been good for community colleges, including Parkland and Danville Area Community College.
Such institutions are at a record high in enrollment. The statewide full-time equivalency enrollments at community colleges reached a record 223,353 for the fall semester, an increase of 9.5 percent from the year before, according to the Illinois Community College Board.
Reporting for FTE enrollments began in 1965, at the dawn of the community college movement.
Parkland's FTE is up 9 percent, a record, said admissions director Mike Henry. Danville Area Community College, which has a smaller population base, is up more than 24 percent, said Stacy Ehmen, the director of admissions for DACC.
Of the 48 community colleges in Illinois, 44 registered increases in enrollment. Of those, 25 saw double-digit increases compared to the fall 2008 semester FTE enrollments, as much as 29.4 percent. There were 19 community colleges that experienced double-digit increases in total head count.
Parkland's total head count is up 8 percent over last year, Henry said, and a small amount of participation involving high school students remains to be counted.
"I don't know yet if it's record, but it's certainly approaching that," he said. "And FTE is already a record."
He said the perception of community colleges as a good value, particularly in starting a new career, is helping spark the increase.
"Normally, a bad economy is good for colleges, with people going back in to improve their skills," Henry said.
"A bad economy also helps keep students looking closer to home. And for sheer economics – English 101 is English 101, pretty much the same course wherever you take it."
He said new and returning (those out for three or four years) students are up 18.5 percent.
Figures for FTE are the measure of total number of credit hours being taken by students divided by 15. Fifteen is the number of semester hours considered as a full-time class load, the ICCB said in a press release.
The statewide Fall 2009 head count enrollment is at a 27-year high, up 6.4 percent from Fall 2008, or more than 380,000 students for this spring compared to about 357,200 for the previous fall semester, the report said.
The full report is available on the ICCB web site, www.iccb.org.
DACC's Ehmen said dislocated workers are a big part of the college's enrollment. So are recent high school graduates in the district.
"We get 40 percent of all high school grads in our district," Ehmen said.
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