Howard Community College Sees Historic Enrollment High

This year is a historic one for Howard Community College.

For the first time in a fall term, the college has surpassed more than 10,000 credit students enrolled, said college spokeswoman Nancy Gainer.

Howard Community College calls itself among the fastest growing community colleges in Maryland. First-time undergraduates looking to avoid high tuition costs and older workers trying to re-tool their skills in a tough economy are flooding to Howard Community College and community colleges across the state for the "distinct value" of an associate's degree, the institutions' leaders say.

In fall of 2011, enrollment is up 5 percent at Howard Community College from this time last year, Gainer said.

She said the median age of enrollment is 22.

“Money Magazine featured HCC in its March 2011 cover story as an affordable college where families are sending their children to receive a quality education, while saving thousands of dollars,” Gainer said.

Colleges in other parts of the state have seen similar enrollment trends.

At the Community College of Baltimore County there has been a dramatic increase in enrollment in both for both credit and non-credit students during the last four years. In 2008, there were 20,673 students enrolled in credit courses, and by 2011 that number had jumped to 26,935, a rise of about 30 percent.

“We’ve had an incredible spike in enrollment in the last four years,” said the college's president, Dr. Sandra Kurtinitis. “We were already a big institution but we have grown sizably bigger. We know part of that is the economy.”

Almost every community college in the state has seen enrollment go up, said Robert Lynch, director of institutional research at Montgomery College.

“Some of that is attributable to students coming back for training and programs that would enable them to fight the job market with a little more ammunition,” he said.

According to Lynch, the biggest spike in enrollment at Montgomery College occurred between 2008-2009. In the fall of 2009, there were 26,147 students enrolled in fall credit programs, up from 24,452 in 2008, an increase of 7 percent. The enrollment of full-time students at the school has also been steadily on the rise.

Schools have had to take special measures to accommodate the growth.

In addition to re-purposing 52 multi-use rooms into classrooms, the CCBC staff, for example, have made class schedules more flexible to accommodate all types of students. The school also is molding its instruction to fit students' high-tech lives by offering more hybrid courses that include online teaching.

“We’ve done everything we can think of to really absorb the enrollment,” Kurtinitis said. 

She adds that in the times of a tough economy, the two-year associate's degree that is offered at the community college level becomes that more valuable.

According to a CNN Money article, for the school year 2010-11, in-state tuition and fees at public four-year colleges and universities rose to $7,605, up 7.9 percent from a year ago. At private four-year institutions, the average cost rose 4.5 percent to $27,293.

“We know there is a distinct value in the associate's degree,” Kurtinitis said. “If [students] do not finish up a four-year degree, at least they’ll have an associate's degree; it’s a pretty important opportunity.”