College enrollment jumps
By Gale Rose of the Tribune Staff
The enrollment numbers are up, way up, for the spring semester at Pratt Community College.
The total credit hours were by 8.2 percent while the actual head count has increased 13.9 percent above the spring 2005 numbers.
The Outreach program has 1,826 students which was up from 1,379 students in spring 2005. The numbers were presented to the PCC Board of Trustees at their monthly meeting Monday night.
The increase in students has the residence halls at 90 percent of total occupancy which is the amount the halls need to be able to pay off their debt service without drawing money from other sources.
The increase is due to the success of a couple of areas including the concurrent enrollment program which allows high school students to take college courses for college credit and for high school graduation credit, said PCC President William Wojciechowski.
"It (concurrent enrollment) has grown considerably over the last year," Wojciechowski said.
Along side concurrent enrollments addition to enrollment is the satellite nursing program at Winfield. It also continues to add students to the allied health program and add to the total credit hours.
The enrollment numbers for the spring of 2006 are better than they have been for several years and that is good news for PCC.
"This is one of the best enrollments we've had in the last 10 years," Wojciechowski said.
As the year progresses, enrollment will likely fall off as some students decide to leave college for a variety of reasons. If the final enrollment increase is higher than the average for Kansas community colleges, PCC will receive additional funds for the amount above the average.
PCC will not qualify for extra funds if the increase is below the state average, Wojciechowski said.
Having additional funds will be vital for PCC and other community colleges if the governor's proposed budget is passed as is by the Legislature.
The governor's budget allows $96.6 million for community colleges and just under $2.3 million of that would go to PCC. That number is about $8,000 less than what PCC got from the state last year, but it doesn't include the out district tuition that community colleges got in fiscal 2005-2006.
Out-district tuition is $6 and is the amount that PCC students from outside the district have to pay per credit hour to attend PCC and the governor's budget has no provision for out-district tuition. The governor's original budget for the last fiscal year didn't include out district either but pressure was applied to the legislature and they added the $6 to the final education budget last year, Wojciechowski said.
Whether or not it will be added this year is unknown but Wojciechowski is hopeful the legislature will add it again.
"We're optimistic we'll get the same support this year," Wojciechowski said.
If the out-district money doesn't come through it would mean a loss of $100,000 to $150,000 from last year and that would have a negative impact when PCC works on its fiscal budget for 2006-2007.
The Legislature could also throw higher education a curve if they decide to shift money from higher education and shift it to the USDs. It that happens PCC could lose more than the worst case scenario of $150,000, Wojciechowski said.
The increased enrollment is expected to continue with the addition of the sports medicine program scheduled to start in the fall of 2006. The trustees got a look at the proposed renovation planned for the training rooms in the lower level of the Dennis Lesh Sports Arena. The rooms are located just off the east staircase in the lower level.
A floor plan and materials were presented by Paul Cavanaugh, president of Places Architects of Wichita. The proposed renovation would cost about $71,000, take about two months to complete and would cover about 750 square feet, Cavanaugh said.
The new sports medicine program is expected to have 12 students the first year with a goal of 18 students. The remodeled room is rather small but not all the students would be in the area at the same time, Wojciechowski said.
The next step is to send out bids for the proposed project. Cavanaugh said he would use as many local contractors as possible for the project.
In other action by the trustees, PCC Foundation was given permission to raise an additional $23,000 for scholarships to cover the new programs added to PCC including nursing, sports medicine and wrestling.
The trustees voted to extend Wojciechowski's contract to 2009.
