Community colleges face greater demands

North Carolina’s community colleges are struggling to keep up as enrollment numbers climb and budgets continue to shrink.

The system is funded according to enrollment numbers, and this year, the system has 20,000 more students than last year. To make things worse, the system’s budget was cut this year as a result of the statewide budget crunch.

“The problem is having the resources to offer the classes that people want,” said Stephen Scott, president of Wake Technical Community College.

“This year we had 10,000 students who were accepted but never registered,” Scott said. “We don’t have the resources to ask them why, but we think it’s because they couldn’t get the classes at the times and places they wanted.”

Scott said Wake Tech’s enrollment grew by more than 10 percent this year while its budget decreased by about 8 percent.

Community colleges statewide are facing similar difficulties. Of the state’s 58 colleges, 57 have seen enrollment increases, said Megen George, director of marketing and external affairs for N.C. Community Colleges.

“The recession is definitely driving those numbers,” she said. “When the economy has a downturn our enrollment numbers go up.”

George said that when economic conditions take a turn for the worse, people go back to community college to gain skills to find a new job or to keep an existing one. But that leaves colleges with less money to educate more students.

To manage, many colleges are increasing class sizes, offering more online classes, hiring fewer faculty and decreasing work hours for full-time faculty.

“Our full-time enrollment has increased from 28 to 33 percent,” said Teri Kaasa, a spokeswoman for Durham Technical Community College.

Kaasa said the school has used larger classes — the average class size has increased 13.1 percent — and offered more online classes to handle the extra students.

The system’s challenges come after the UNC-system Board of Governors cited community colleges as a possible solution to the state’s financial problems.

The board said earlier this year that students who enroll in community college for two years before transferring to UNC-system schools save the state and the students money.

The state pays about $12,000 per year for each student in a university. Because some drop out, community college transfers are more efficient because for at least a year, they cost the state only about $3,000, said the board’s Chairwoman Hannah Gage in an interview in September.

She also said that attending community colleges could make students better prepared for the university curriculum, increasing graduation and retention rates for UNC-system schools.

But N.C. community colleges are not sure they have enough resources to accommodate an even higher increase in enrollment.

“Our colleges work hard to provide that open door to any student,” Scott said.

“But there’s a finite limit to the number of classes we can teach with the dollars we have.”



Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.