I heard this story this afternoon on Michigan Public Radio: “Community College Enrollment Increases.” And basically, that’s what the story is about. Among other things, the story talks about how this is having a big impact on available classroom and parking spaces at Henry Ford CC and Washtenaw CC.
Is this a good trend for EMU? Well, I have to think that it generally is because we get a lot of their students as transfers into our undergraduate and graduate programs. But one of my colleagues was complaining the other day that we were losing tons of students to Washtenaw CC because they are so much cheaper and their facilities (classroom spaces, computer labs, etc.) are so much better than what we have at EMU, especially in Pray-Harrold.
I don’t know about that. I’ve never been on campus at WCC or Henry Ford CC, but at the end of the day, it seems to me those schools give different kinds of degrees. Sure, you can do a lot of gen-ed programs at community colleges, but you still can’t get a bachelors degree, and that is still the minimum entry-level degree for many different “white collar” professions. So I tend to think that growing enrollments at area community colleges will eventually translate into growing enrollments at EMU.
