Here’s HVCC’s plan to reverse a nationwide drop in community college enrollment
By Chelsea Diana / Albany Business Review / Dec. 13, 2019
A huge whiteboard lines a long wall in Roger Ramsammy’s office at Hudson Valley Community College, filled with ways the community college can increase its student body and buck an almost decadelong trend of declining enrollment at community colleges.
This has been one of Ramsammy’s biggest missions since he joined HVCC a year and a half ago as president.
Community college enrollment nationwide declined 11% between 2012 and 2017, according to research from the Southern Regional Education Board.
The Troy college has seen around a 3% decline in enrollment each year for the last few years. Those declines have added up. For the fall 2019 semester, HVCC had 10,464 students. In 2013, HVCC had 12,882 students — about 2,400 students more than today. That’s a decrease of almost 19%.
Ramsammy said two things are causing these enrollment declines: The population of 18-year-olds is declining and will continue to decline until 2030. And the economy is doing well — community college enrollment increases when the economy is doing poorly as people look toward education for better paying jobs.
To bring in more students, Ramsammy and HVCC officials have started to look at what programs, curriculum and classes could be important 10 years from now.
“We’re putting more emphasis on this new generation to come. So we began trying to interpret what does the generation to come look like?” Ramsammy said. “How do we meet them? How do we build a college that is not going to be the status quo? How would we build a college that is thinking 2030 because that’s where it tells us we’re going to fall short. How do we build a college that will sustain itself serving the community?”
To start, it involves making investments around in-demand programs like advanced manufacturing, nursing and electrical construction. This fall, HVCC opened its new $14 million advanced manufacturing center that will let the college double enrollment in the advanced manufacturing program to 288 students over the next several years.
HVCC has invested another $2 million to improve and enhance its nursing program to bring in more students. And it is starting to look for new space for its in-demand electrical construction program to bring in more students at its TEC-SMART campus in Malta.
Another way to reverse the enrollment decline, Ramsammy said, includes bringing different kinds of students to HVCC, and retaining those students for the full two years.
One of the first things he did as president was to redesign and reorganize the academic teams. Last year, HVCC named Penny Hill as its dean of economic development and workforce initiatives — a new position for the community college. She is working closely with its business and industry contacts.
It has renewed a focus on apprenticeship programs, as well as on-site micro-credentialing. HVCC recently worked with employees at Northern Rivers by bringing professors into the workplace to help with skill training. Those types of micro-credentialing programs, completed in a year or a few months with a certificate, can bring in nontraditional students.
Ramsammy has also been traveling to Costa Rica, and presenting to the U.N. councils in Latin America and the Caribbean, looking to attract more international students to HVCC — a move that many private colleges are making to attract more students, but that’s less common for community colleges.
Another example is a new agreement HVCC signed with the University at Albany. The transfer admission guarantee gives students who graduate from HVCC automatic admission to UAlbany if they maintain certain GPA minimums and meet guidelines specific for their academic programs. The students will receive support services from UAlbany during their two years at HVCC.
Ramsammy said only two other community colleges and universities have signed such agreements, including SUNY Broome Community College and Binghamton University. He sees the program as a way to boost enrollment and retain students who plan to get four-year degrees.
Beyond providing new programs and new types of degrees, Ramsammy said making sure the campus is a welcoming place is part of attracting more students. The college is developing a new master plan for campus. HVCC is working with planning consultant JMZ Architects and Planners and will likely get a preliminary report on recommendations for improving the campus later this month.
Published: Fri, 13 Dec 2019 13:30:59 +0000 by d.gardner