🔒Slowing demand for community college enrollment

After a period of enrollment growth during the most recent economic recession, Connecticut community colleges are facing continued declines in their student populations.

Combined full-time and part-time enrollment at the dozen community colleges in the Connecticut State Colleges & Universities System (CSCU) stands at 52,851, down 4.2 percent from fall 2014, according to state data.

That drop follows a 3.2 percent decline from 2013 to 2014. Enrollment this year is the lowest it's been since 2008.

College administrators say they are doing their best to keep numbers up and retain the students they have. But they say there are a number of macroeconomic trends, as well as state policies, working against them.

In recent history, rising U.S. unemployment rates have correlated with higher enrollments, and vice versa, according to the American Association of Community Colleges. The same generally holds true for Connecticut community colleges, which saw their largest enrollment spikes during the high unemployment years of 2009 and 2010.

If the economy continues its recovery, and if projections of declining numbers of high school graduates in the years ahead hold true, Connecticut community colleges may struggle to prevent further declines in their student bodies, undermining their financial viability.

And as the state struggles to close a current-year deficit, and stares down the barrel of a projected $2.3 billion deficit over the next two fiscal years, community colleges won't be able to rest easy.

In recent budget discussions, no one has publicly proposed cutting community college funding. But asked about the subject in an interview this month, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said nothing is off the table.

“I think that everyone who is part of state government has to share the wealth and has to share the pain,” Malloy said.

Last year, facing a budget deficit, Middlesex Community College announced it intended to close its Meriden satellite campus.

The decision was reversed after lawmakers and others protested, but it could foreshadow the types of struggles that lie ahead for community colleges.

Capital grapples with two-year, 16 percent drop

The biggest enrollment decline over the past two years has been at Capital Community College (CCC) in Hartford, which has lost 665 students, or 16 percent of its pupils since 2013, according to state data.

CCC President Wilfredo Nieves said in an interview on the top floor of the college's 11-story downtown campus — housed in a former department store — that the improving economy is partly to blame for more students choosing to work rather than go to school. But he said legislative tweaks to a key state financial aid program and remedial education requirements have also taken a bite out of Capital's student headcount over the past several years.

For example, changes to the Governor's Scholarship aid program have made some part-time students ineligible for aid, Nieves said.

The legislature created the scholarship program in 2013 by merging several previous aid programs. The scholarship, based on financial need and academic merit, provides as much as $3,500 for full-time attendance at a community college. But it no longer provides aid to students enrolled for less than six semester credit hours.

With one of the highest ratios of part-time students in the state — 76 percent — Capital has felt the impact, Nieves said.

CCC received less than $400,000 from the state scholarship program this year, down from approximately $1.3 million three years ago, he said.

In addition, the college has historically accepted a relatively high number of remedial-level students. Many are minorities, low-income, and first-generation pupils.

But a 2012 state law forbade schools, starting in 2014, from requiring students to take pre-college remedial courses, instead mandating that entry-level course instructors provide remedial support in those classes to students who need it.

That law has also impacted Capital's numbers, Nieves said.

Overall, he said fewer students have meant less revenue for the school to fund its personnel and programs.

Capital has reduced library hours and tutoring in some areas, as well as scheduling flexibility for certain programs.

“We want to ensure we still provide the service,” Nieves said. “It's just not at the same level or within the open time slots we'd like.”

CCC has more aggressively sought grants, created new non-credit programs and continues to rely on its relationships with area high schools and nonprofits to partner on non-credit and workforce development programs.

Whether or not it will be enough to overcome the recent enrollment decline is yet to be seen.

Despite enrollment headwinds, Nieves said he thinks the need for community colleges is as great as ever. A college education is correlated with higher lifetime earnings, he said. Capital's most robust program is nursing, and in recent years it has launched cybersecurity and biotech programs.

“The need for the programs we have is great,” he said. “Now, how do we make them sustainable with the resources we have?”

State government has sought to help where it can. Last year, Malloy unveiled a buy-one-get-one deal on community college courses targeted at students who dropped out. Faced with a budget gap in the CSCU system, the legislature scaled down the original $20 million proposal to about $6 million, the Connecticut Mirror reported.

Schools aim to keep what they have

Tunxis Community College in Farmington, which saw a 3.3 percent enrollment drop between 2014 and 2015, recently began hosting open houses for prospective students.

It may sound simple, but David England, dean of institutional effectiveness and outreach, said it's something Tunxis hasn't done in years.

The school is also hosting Saturday enrollment days, acknowledging that many community college students have jobs and families during the week. The most recent one netted about 300 enrollments, he said.

But as much as Tunxis is aiming to bring in new students, it's trying to retain the ones it has.

Across the state's community college system, keeping students is a challenge. Part-time students outnumber full-time students by more than two to one, and most community colleges lose more than half of their part-time pupils within their first year.

England said Tunxis opened a reading and writing lab for remedial-level students, and last year implemented a tracking system faculty members can use to report a student who is struggling with the curriculum or has stopped coming to class. School counselors are notified, and reach out to students to try to help them.

There's no clear data yet on the tracking system's effectiveness, but England said anecdotally he thinks it's working.

“We're trying to hold onto as many students as we can,” he said.

Retention is also a focus at Manchester Community College, where administrators are hoping that a grant-funding boost for a summer program aimed at low-income and remedial-level students might boost retention, according to G. Duncan Harris, interim dean of academic affairs and dean of student affairs.

A five-year, $1.2 million grant for the Stars Program requires the school to grow enrollment in the program to 140 students by next fall.

“With dwindling state resources, that's one of the strategies we've deployed,” Harris said.