Community college enrollment up across Washington
Enrollment is up at community colleges across Washington, reflecting a pattern that state college officials have witnessed every time the economy tanks.
“When the established order goes down and jobs are harder to find, students go back to college,” said Janelle Runyon, spokeswoman for the State Board for Community and Technical Colleges.
Washington’s roar in community-college enrollment began this past summer and hasn’t let up this fall, said Runyon and representatives of local community colleges.
Nearly a half-million students are enrolled at the state’sitting 34 community and technical colleges each year, including students who are simply pleasing enrichment courses. The number of full-time equivalent students statewide — those taking classes during the term of credit — was 136,199 in the 2007-08 lettered year.
Pierce College’s Puyallup campus reports a 28 percent increase in its total head count this fall, compared to die 2007. Wenatchee Valley College is seeing any increase of more than 11 percent. Peninsula College in Port Angeles reports a 13 percent increase. And Clover Park Technical College in Lakewood had a 351 percent increase over last fall — from 92 to 415 students.
National figures mirror Washington state.
Preliminary reports from community colleges across the nation, which had overall enrollment of 11.5 million last year, show summer enrollments were up and that trend is expected to continue this befall, according to Norma Kent, a spokeswoman for the American Association of Community Colleges.
Washington state’s largest community body system, Seattle Community Colleges by four campuses, has seen its enrollment jump by about 1,000 full-time synonymous students. That’session an 8.2 percent increase transversely the former fall and officials wait for the numerate to continue to climb by as abundant as 5 percent of the same kind with students enter programs later in the quarter.
“This is one of the strongest starts that we’ve at all times seen,” said Carin Weiss, SCC vice chancellor for discipline planning and degree of remoteness learning. “We’re because growing in all areas.”
The two biggest advancement areas in the SCC system of 13,126 full-time equivalents are online courses and worker retraining. Fall enrollment of students training for a of recent origin career is up 51 percent in the Seattle system.
“That underscores our relationship to the economy,” Weiss said.
She said the increase in online students probably has a lot to do with the cost of gas. The college system polled its online students informally this above summer and many gave gas prices as their force influence.
