Pulaski Technical College, the largest two-year college in the state, enrolled nearly 12 percent fewer students this semester than it did in the fall of 2012, a preliminary enrollment count showed.
The college had 10,533 students enrolled on the 11th day of classes, when collegesand universities report their first preliminary counts to the Arkansas Department of Higher Education. That’s an 11.77 percent drop from 11,938 students enrolled last fall.
Leaders of the college - which has grown rapidly since the early 1990s - will now search for ways to trim $2 million from its $48 million budget, President Margaret Ellibee said. That could include not filling some vacant staff positions and making an across-the-board cut in operating funds, she said.
“We have got to look at the data and the trends going on in the economy and come up with contingencies and options based on that,” Ellibee said. “We have to beresponsive and meet our students’ needs regardless.”
The North Little Rock college had expected an enrollment decrease of about 1,000 students because of changes in its admissions policies and new restrictions on federal financial aid, campus leaders said. But the decline of 1,405 students was more than leaders had budgeted for.
Other community colleges in Arkansas reported smaller enrollment declines last week. The Higher Education Department plans to release 11th-day preliminary enrollment totals on Monday for all Arkansas public and private institutions, an agency spokesman said.
Ed Franklin, executive director of the Arkansas Association of Two-Year Colleges, said enrollment at Arkansas colleges grew faster than usual during the recent economic downturn.
“But when the economy recovers, as is happening now, people return to work,” he said.
That trend is particularly pronounced at two-year colleges, where workers frequently take classes to gain additional job skills and technical certificates during periods of unemployment, college leaders said.
Northwest Arkansas Community College in Bentonville, the second-largest two-year college in the state, reported 8,102 students on the 11th day of classes, a 3.8 percent drop from last year’s preliminary enrollment of 8,418 students.
Arkansas State University-Beebe, the third-largest, had a preliminary fall enrollment of 4,387 students, a decline from last year’s 4,540-student enrollment. National Park Community College in Hot Springs enrolled 3,243 students, a drop from 3,555 last year.
For many colleges, the recent enrollment decreases follow years of growth. Pulaski Technical College grew from 9,899 students in 2004 to nearly 13,000 in 2008, amore than 30 percent increase, data from the Higher Education Department show.
Growth like that isn’t sustainable, Ellibee said. Now that expansion has slowed, campus leaders must remain flexible as they budget and plan, she said.
Pulaski Tech is surveying students who were accepted for enrollment but chose not to enroll, and it is reviewing its admissions procedures to see if anything should be changed, Ellibee said.
Campus leaders said changes in federal financial aid have put a damper on enrollment growth. Those changes include a smaller margin of error allowed for income reporting when students’ federal financial aid applications are selected for random review, they said.
In addition, about 200 students who would have previously attended Pulaski Tech cannot attend right away because of a new policy.
Under new minimum admissions standards approved by the college’s board last year, applicants who score below a 13 on the reading portion of the ACT or a comparable college-admissions test will be referred to adult-education centers to improve their literacy skills. People who score in that range on the ACT test, which has a maximum score of 36, have reading skills roughly equivalent to a seventh-grade level.
Those standards may slow initial enrollment, but they will help increase student retention. That’s because they will ensure that the school is admitting students who are more prepared for college-level course work, Ellibee said.
“You have to be a balanced institution,” she said. “When you look at the growth and the intake, you also have to look at the results from our students.”
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 15 on 09/22/2013